LUGARES MAGAZINE Nro. 66
Page. 80 - 83
Text: Soledad Gil


To reach the hotel and find its high walls and gates closed, to ask for accommodations like a foreigner in the times of the old colony, to enter the big patio overlooked by an enormous agauribay tree and rest on a bed covered with a loom-woven bedspread. There is nowhere like Molinos to feel so out of time.
Everything remains as it was in the days of the Governor Don Nicolás Severo Isasi Isasmendi. The hotel was his last residence, and although it stands right across from the church -a jewel of the Calchayui Valleys -Molinos and Cachi are the only towns that did not grow around either the settlement or the parish, but as a result of its typically feudal origins. Lands and owner marked the fate of its rounded adobe corners. Marcelino Comejo Isasmendi has been in charge of the place now for more than ten years.
Last year he had a swimming pool built to provide a transition between the interior which continues to be a reminder of the refuge of royalists and the exterior, which is still dusty and untatned, the capital of the "poncho" salteño, the headquarters of the Cooperativa de Artesanos dc San Pedro Nolasco de Los Molinos and an interesting vicuña breeding farm.