Fresh air in Cuzco.

• Author: Stalker, Ian
• Position: Americas !Ojo!

THE UPSCALE Hotel Monasterio in Cuzco, Peru, can provide a breath of fresh air in a city where many newly arrived travelers may at times wonder about the air apparent.

The Spanish colonial structure, which began life as a monastery in 1592 after being built on the site of what was an Inca palace, this year became the first hotel in the world to pump enriched oxygen into guest rooms, allowing those who have just arrived in the Andean city from sea level to better adjust to the thin air of Cuzco, found at over eleven thousand feet, an altitude that has 30 percent less oxygen than sea level. The enriched oxygen increases oxygen in the bloodstream, helping people cope with the altitude.

Enriched oxygen can now be pumped into 87 of the hotel's 127 guest units through vents, with guests nervous about tiring easily in lofty Cuzco or contracting altitude sickness--a common ailment at high altitudes--able to request that the enriched oxygen be pumped into their rooms before they arrive. As well, those who decide they need it after arrival can call the front desk and have the system turned on.

The hotel estimates at least half of its guests could have trouble with the altitude if enriched oxygen weren't available.

Even spending a few hours in a room with enriched oxygen will make a difference, promises hotel spokeswoman Roxana Gonzales. "The sensation is like descending 1,000 meters [3,280 feet]. You sleep like a baby, and the next day you feel fine."

The enriched oxygen is only one of many interesting features to the Monasterio, which housed priests before becoming a hotel in the 1960s. The priests relocated to another structure after deciding there were no longer enough of them to justify using the sprawling monastery as their base. The hotel remains the property of the office of the Catholic archbishop of Peru, with Orient-Express Hotels--the Monasterio's manager--paying rent to that office. Religious artwork found throughout the tiled-roofed property--badly damaged by a seventeenth-century earthquake--also belongs to the archbishop's office, although the hotel sometimes calls in experts to restore many of the old paintings on display. Tours that highlight the numerous paintings are held three times a week.

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