Sol y Luna

Travel writer and photographer Mark Stratton recently spent a heavenly week in Peru’s Sacred Valley.  “…Immersed within a living Andean landscape…” he writes in the August/September edition of Wanderlust travel magazine, “…little [has] changed since the conquistadors arrived”.

A winter visit to the Peruvian Andes with an unusual slant, Mark’s journey was an archaeo-astronomical tour of the region.  

As part of Mark’s trip he enjoyed a stay at Sol y Luna, a 43 villa Relais & Chateaux hotel described by Mark as “transcendentally relaxing”, whilst visiting an array of sites located within striking distance of the hotel, such as Cusco, Ollantaytambo, Pisac and Sacsayhuaman.

An astral guide

Mark explored the Sacred Valley under the tutelage of his astral guide Andres Adasme, a 50 year old Chilean archaeoastronomer and Andes resident, whose “energetic, inquisitive mind constantly challenged an Inca architectural orthodoxy that understates the prowess of earlier civilisations”.

Andres specialises in studying how past civilisations used the sun and stars to design their temples and guide their lives, something the Incas were well known for, both in their empire’s capital, Cusco, and vast array of temples and fortresses that make the Sacred Valley such a draw.

“Squeezing knowledge from ancient stones,” is how Adasme describes his role, as he reveals how sophisticated and complex these ancient cultures were.

The Winter Solstice directs bright rays of sunshine into the central plaza of Cusco

Winter solstice

Mark visited the Sacred Valley during the lead up to the winter solstice. “While millions come to Peru’s Andean Highlands for the Inca ruins and festivals” he writes, “there are other stories here.”

The sophistication of the ancient civilisations of the Andes was underestimated by the Spanish conquistadors, who were perhaps too distracted by the region’s material riches to recognise its more ethereal qualities, which come to the fore during astronomical events such as the solstices and the equinox.

“Time your visit for the solstice to explore an ancient region” he suggests, “to discover the cosmological secrets behind the region’s fanciful archaeological heritage.”

As an example, the architecture of old Cusco is designed so that on the winder solstice the sun’s rays beam through the city’s narrow streets to illuminate the central plaza. “An eternal timestamp on Peru’s pre-Columbian architecture,” writes Stratton.

His visit also included a lesson on “the celestial interconnectedness” of Ollantaytambo, an Incan fortress and royal estate during the reign of Emperor Pachacuti.

The milky way glitters above the Sol y Luna hotel at night

Transcendence at Sol y Luna

After arriving into Cusco at over 3,400m, Mark descended to the lower altitude Sacred Valley to help with his acclimatisation, arriving at Hotel Sol y Luna.

With some time to rest, he happily “reoxygenated in a stone built casita at the transcendentally calm Hotel Sol y Luna”.

Mark writes of gratefully sinking into a bath, and passing the time by day watching “gossamer green hummingbirds levitate around flower filled gardens” and by night observing the Milky Way as it “sparkled magnificently overhead”.

At Sol y Luna, 43 luxury casitas nestle in peaceful seclusion within 25 acres of gardens filled with flowers and butterflies under the shadow of the Andes mountains.

“Down here, between Pisac and Ollantaytambo, the flat-bottomed farmland hid a breadbasket of maize and hundreds of potato varieties” Mark goes on. “But this was also dry season, so the land was coloured a russet-brown and the stubble of cut maize resembled brushed mohair.”

Guests can explore the Sacred Valley from Sol y Luna, on a series of treks, on horseback, by e-bike or ATV.

Travel writer Mark Stratton admired the hummingbirds from his bath every morning

Foundations of hope

Sol y Luna cleverly balances the best of a luxury hotel — offering high-end accommodation, exceptional service, fine dining and curated excursions — with a clear purpose.

Its unique mission lies in supporting the Sol y Luna Foundation, “a remarkable educational and social foundation” founded in 2000 by French woman Petit Mirabel, who “arrived in the Sacred Valley 20 years ago, shocked by the child poverty that she found in the region”.

The hotel, via the foundation, funds a school, children’s home, and special needs facilities for underprivileged children from the surrounding villages. “The foundation also runs Roots and Wings, which support students going to university”, Mark explains.

During his tour of the school and kindergarten, Mark saw first hand “the kind of exuberance you’d expect from small children”, but also the poverty that afflicts the region.

“Many of the kids come from poor Andean households” he goes on, “so the foundation offers them a future filled with hope”.

The foundation is a defining point of the hotel; guests often say that their stays at the hotel are made all the more enjoyable by knowing that they are contributing to such a worthy cause.

The exuberant spirits of the children of the Sol y Luna foundation

Keeping up the good work

The last few years, however, have left the foundation in a vulnerable position.

The foundation requires £470,000 a year to operate, but first the pandemic and then political instability saw travel to Peru slow, leading to funding for the association itself reducing.

“It needs visitors now more than ever to continue with the good work that it does” Mark notes.

Mark’s archaeoastronomy journey allowed him to see Cusco and the Sacred Valley “in a completely different and wondrous light.”

From “witnessing the sun inflame Calle Seven Snakes and metaphorically standing shoulder to shoulder with cosmic designers of the past,” to the roaring fires of the Hotel Sol y Luna, Stratton found himself illuminated by the sacred sunbeams of the Andes.

Thankfully, Peru is now as stable and safe to visit as ever and the pandemic is far behind us.

Never has there been a better time to travel to this remarkable and fascinating part of the world, whether to visit the archeaoastronomical sites of ancient cultures, to support underprivileged children, or merely to soak up the peaceful atmosphere of the Sacred Valley.

To organise a trip to Sol y Luna, or learn more about how you can help support the foundation, do get in touch and we would be delighted to help.