The Hacienda Cantayo is located a couple of miles out of Nasca in a quiet, irrigated valley next to the ‘ancient’ (in fact part-reconstructed) aqueducts that are much-visited on the Nasca package tour circuit. The hotel seemed genuinely luxurious, in stark contrast to the painfully poor, outlying suburb of Nasca that is its immediate neighbour (just the other side of the enclosing high walls). One of the main attractions of the hotel is its extensive and attractively planted gardens, which also feature a large swimming pool. From these gardens there are superb views of the surrounding mountains, including Cerro Blanco, the world’s highest sand dune (apparently). The hacienda also boasts a helipad from which several tours of the Nasca Lines depart on most days.

My room was fine, although a little lacking in natural light, making it a bit too ‘monastic’ for my taste. None of the rooms had televisions, which to me seemed like taking the hotel’s expensive and somewhat affected rustic-chique a little too far (but I acknowledge that it cuts down on noise levels between the rooms, particularly along the echoing colonnades). The dining room, reception and bar/lounge area were all stunning but overall the hotel seemed a bit soulless. The reason for this is that it caters almost exclusively for large package tour groups. So when a group arrives the hotel becomes very busy, perhaps even too noisy. When a group leaves the hotel virtually shuts down (on my second night I had to request that they open the dining area so I could actually eat some dinner). Unfortunately this is very much a function of the Peruvian tourist industry which seems wedded to the idea of highly controlled package tour groups hurtling between sightseeing attractions to take postcard-replica photos and little else.

The hotel has a small menagerie scattered about its attractive gardens. Most of the animals were being treated okay, but I suspect most guests who possessed an ounce of sensitivity and who had actually bothered to notice would probably have been appalled (as I was) by the lone monkey chained day and night to a bare tree next to the main entrance. Ditto the numerous rabbits crammed into inadequately sized cages. I’m hardly an animal rights activist, having munched my way happily through cute guinea pigs and alpaca kebabs during my tour of Peru, but even I had an overwhelming urge to liberate the poor, manifestly depressed monkey confined to that one small, leafless tree. I guess my recent visit to the Manu biosphere reserve had put me in this frame of mind.

Another detractor for me was the fact that none of the reception staff seemed to speak any vaguely comprehensible English which seemed out of sympathy with the desire to attract international guests. A moment’s thought reveals why: they don’t have to. This is because the visiting package tour guides do it for them and the guests mostly interact with the guides only. Also when I enquired about some local tours the reception staff were utterly unhelpful. Basically they don’t need to be helpful because the hotel exists to serve large, organised groups in which everything a guest might do has been pre-booked several months prior. So, as an independent traveller, I found it to be a disappointing experience given that it is trying to position itself at the top end of the market.