Museo Cayara

Delightful rural accommodation on a dairy farm with a museum and chapel close to Potosí.

More than just a hotel, this unique property is a rural hacienda in a fertile valley (at 3600m the altitude is 400m lower than Potosí, 30 minutes’ drive away, and therefore attractive to anyone wary of staying at high altitudes). It’s a dairy farm but also a museum housed in buildings which can trace their history back to 1557.

It has 8 small, comfortable, but certainly not luxurious guest rooms and serves simple home-cooked meals. The original owner was the Controller of the Royal Mint, and since then it has been passed down to various aristocratic families, the heirlooms of whom now adorn the walls of the main house. The library’s catalogued collection includes a wide range of volumes, some very old, in several languages.  Much of the furniture dates from the colonial period, and there’s an arms and artefact collection displayed its own gallery. There’s a separate chapel. So isolated is this spot that there is no public transport and electricity has to be provided by the farm’s own ancient generator.