Gualaquí

Gualaquí is the first house you reach on arrival and the last you leave. It sits near the heart of the cluster — beside the long table, where the guests of all five houses gather at nightfall — and so it is the most open of them all: a single storey, glass walls that fold away, a concrete terrace reaching out into the forest.

Its name comes from an old word of the cordillera, the kind that named places of passage. That's what Gualaquí is: a threshold. The house where the stay begins with a conversation and ends with the promise of return.

It's the brightest at noon and the warmest at night, when the long table is lit a few steps away and the valley becomes only silhouettes.