The Hotel El Bosque in Jaen in Northern Peru

The Hotel El Bosque at Avenida Mesones Muro 62 in Jaen (the capital of the Jaen Province in the Cajamarca Region of Peru) delighted me after more than a week of fairly primitive accommodations in Celendin and Leymebamba, a lodge with no electricity and one with none during the day.

Electricity and television were nice, but what I loved was the swimming pool. For reasons I won't get into here, what I thought was a trip to Peru's north coast was passed almost entirely in the Andes. Jaen, with an elevation of 750 meters, was the lowest we had been since leaving Lima soon after arriving there ten days earlier.

The pool was a pleasant temperature and not hyper-chlorinated. (It was chlorinated, I watched it being serviced while having breakfast poolside.) Somewhere between round and oblong, its shape was good for swimming around (rather than back and forth).

The restaurant, visible across the pool in my photos, was a chifa. "Chifa" means "eat rice" in Cantonese and all Chinese restaurants in Peru are called "chifas." I think that all Peruvian restaurants serve rice, much of it grown around Jaen, but non-chifas supplement the rice with potatoes or pasta. For dinner I had a steak (planchar) in garlic sauce. The included breakfast consisted of juice, coffee, bread, and scrambled eggs. I wanted ham but settled for a grilled chicken breast on a bun for six soles (roughly $2US).

The room had an adequate air conditioner-made adequate by also having a ceiling fan--a tv with CNN, a minibar, an open closet with shelves, firm mattresses. The air-conditioner blotted out the street noise, which was otherwise audible, even though our room was the furthest one from the street in the hotel.

There was only one packet of shampoo in our room. The standard was clearly two, which is how many the restocking placed there while I was out by the pool (under an umbrella).