My wife and I stayed at the Hotel Paracas for four nights at the end of a 17-day Peru trip in September. (The trip also included seven nights at Starwood's Tambo del Inka in the Sacred Valley and three at Starwood's Palacio del Inka in Cuzco. I've reviewed the TdI here already and will review the PdI shortly).

Despite the positive and useful reviews here, including a great one by SometimesFlyer, we were surprised by how much we liked this place. If we had to do it over again, we easily could have spent another day or two.

Getting There

We took buses back and forth to Lima, which is north of Paracas, about 3.5 hours each way. (If you don't mind driving in a foreign country, and especially braving the mess that is Lima and the possible police shake-down stops out on the road to Paracas, you can rent a car as the entrepid SometimesFlyer did. The hotel could also set up a car for you, for perhaps $200 (????) each way. There might be a small Peruvian airline that flies to some town not too far from Paracas, but its flight schedule didn’t fit our schedule so I didn’t look into how regularly or reliably it runs.) We took a bus company called Cruz del Sur on the way down and another called Oltursa on the way back. We got the better seats (I believe they were called VIP or something like that) both ways, in the downstairs sections of the buses, because they have more legroom. The seats were recliners with foot rests with plenty of room and quite comfortable. (We're not talking Greyhound here, folks...quite a bit nicer than Greyhound.) The two seemed almost identical, though CdS seemed just a bit spiffier. Its Lima bus station was fine as well, and even had a small lounge upstairs for VIP passengers. We took Oltursa on the way back because it had a morning bus coming back to Lima whereas CdS didn't. Anyway, while based on our own experience I found both of them fine, I did see one recent post at Tripadvisor.com saying that Oltursa stranded folks on the side of the road for several hours while waiting to get their bus repaired.

To make a long story short, the CdS English website was kind of confusing and I couldn't fathom the Oltursa website since it's all in Spanish and I only speak a smattering of the language. So we asked the great concierge desk at the Tambo del Inka to get the tickets for us early in our trip. I'd imagine you could also do it at their offices or through a travel agent while in Peru.

The ride down was comfortable, though they play some of the movies in the buses kind of loud. (The movie selection wasn't so bad, however, so we watched a couple.) You might want to bring ear plugs or an Ipod with you. Most of the ride is flat and kind of boring...not very scenic at all. You pass by some pretty poor and desolate areas along the way.

I'd imagine there are taxis at the CdS Paracas bus station, but we didn't look since we arranged a very cheap pick-up from the hotel. That bus station isn't all that far from the town of Paracas proper, maybe a fifteen minute walk, but the walk along the road didn't look to be especially nice (though not dangerous, as Paracas seemed like a pretty safe area to my admittedly uneducated eye) so I'd opt for the hotel ride even if you're traveling very light.

The hotel

Really, really nice in most respects. Nice rooms and beautiful grounds. I agree with SometimesFlyer that it wasn’t quite up to the standard of Starwood’s Tambo del Inka property in the Sacred Valley in terms of service. Most employees were great, though the restaurant hostess and at least one of the restaurant managers were cold bordering on haughty on more than one occasion.

Beautiful grounds for this seaside resort, with nice sunset views. Rooms quite good…not quite up to the standard of TdI, but that’s saying a lot. In and of themselves, they were large, quiet, clean, etc. If I recall correctly, most of the rooms are two-unit affairs, one upstairs (which is to be preferred) and one downstairs. All have balconies for hanging out.

My being a Starwood Platinum, we were fortunate enough on our cash plus points stay to be upgraded to a suite, part of a row of rooms facing out on the water. (Well, all of the rooms face out on the water, but the ones further back have their views partly blocked.) I don’t know if folks should necessarily expect such luck, though, as we were there in September, a relatively slow time of the year. (I think the peak would be November through March, the summer along this part of the Peruvian Coast.) In any event, the suites consist of two large rooms, one being the bedroom of course and the other the living area. We first were in 126, which also had two bathrooms. We then moved to 346, which “only” had one bathroom but which also has a very small outdoor dipping/soaking pool that’s like a hot tub. One day it didn’t seem to warm up enough (even though we had it serviced by a technician) but the other day it did, so it was a mixed experience. But sitting in it that one day was nice, and I guess during the Peruvian coast summer the heat might not be necessary. I don’t know what term the hotel uses for the hot tub suite, but it’s worth asking for.

Now, why did we move from one suite to the other? This gets to my only real complaint about the hotel: There was fairly loud music booming from both pools, which we were situated in-between. Not so bad that I couldn’t screen out most of it with ear buds, but still a hassle. So we asked to move, and 346 (which is toward one end of the resort, at the opposite end from one pool and not too close to the other) was much better in that regard (not to mention that hot tub!). Still, on our last full day there, they seemed to crank up the music at the pool more, with the same loop of pop songs over and over again. (Perhaps it was louder that day because it was a Saturday and the hotel was busier…I don’t know.) I still have Cyndy Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” running through my head three months later. (Now, if the loop consisted of Springsteen songs^, I would have asked them to crank up the volume.) I recognize that I’m not the most noise-tolerant person, and it seemed to be fine with the hotel's main clientele, Peruvians – “when in Rome”… - so I didn’t ask the hotel to turn it down and am not sure what would have happened if I had. (Probably nothing.) Also, FWIW, the timing and volume of the music was pretty erratic.

Though we didn’t use them, the pools were pretty nice. One even had a heated section to hang out in during the evening, though the temperature was just a tad on the cool side for our tastes.

Also, a very nice lounge area between the main pool and the water, with both a pleasant indoor space and lots of outdoor tables. We only checked it out once, but good for drinks and snacks.

We ate most nights in town (more on that below), but the one night we ate at the hotel the meal was good. Nice breakfast buffet as well, which I got as my Plat amenity. Like the lounge area (but distinct from it), you could dine indoors at the main restaurant or outdoors on its patio, at least for breakfast. (Not sure if the patio was open for dinner.) As part of the complimentary breakfast, we also could order from an a la carte menu (in addition to the buffet) of eggs, bacon, pancakes, etc.


The setting/location

Beautiful, green and by the sea. But this is not a beach resort. The water’s too cold, and at least when we were there full of large jellyfish. No beach at the hotel itself, though the grounds are so nice that doesn't really matter. (The beach that stretches for about a ten-minute walk between the hotel and the town of Paracas isn't especially pretty, though I guess you could avail of it if for some reason you didn't want to be on the hotel grounds or your patio.)

Nevertheless, the location is great for a lot of reasons. For one thing, there is an incredible bird sanctuary on offshore islands about a twenty-minute boat ride away (on pretty placed waters). More birds than I’ve ever seen, plus lots of sea lions lazing on the rocks of the islands. Many, many thousands upon thousands of birds perched on those rocks (where they leave guano for harvesting every few years). We’re not bird watchers by any means, but this was really something. You can book a boat via the hotel, which leaves right from the hotel, or simply stroll over to town to do the same for half the price. But the hotel boat is smaller than many leaving from town – perhaps 16 versus 24 people? – and that taken with the reliability of booking that way made it worthwhile for us.

(For that matter, you can also see scores of birds hanging out on the docks by the hotel in the early morning, as well as flying by and resting out on the water during the day. Kind of interesting, and not noisy.)

Oh, also, from the boat heading out to the Sanctuary you can see on the hillside one of the famous Nazca lines. Though from Paracas you can arrange to ride out to an airstrip (maybe an hour's car ride away??) for quick aerial views of those lines, seeing one of them from the boat was enough for us. Given what I've read about those plane rides (pretty quick and dizzying), the view from the boat might even be better in that the boat (or at least the hotel boat we used) stops and lingers longer.

We like being near a town where we can wander in for local restaurants, both for food quality and to save some $$. It’s just about a ten minute stroll to the north, to the small resort town of Paracas from the hotel, which was great. (You can walk along the beach during the day and along the decently illuminated street at night. That stretch of road is pretty empty at night, but there is one restaurant along the way. And as I said, the whole feel of Paracas is that it seems like a pretty safe place, so we weren't concerned walking into and back from town.) Some good, inexpensive, basic seafood places, largely family-run. They are not heated, though, so in the cool September evenings we were glad we had a few layers on.

More generally, the town is pleasant. Nothing really fancy, but friendly with some tourist shops, a few places to get basic supplies, and a number of restaurants, many of them on a boardwalk area running along the water. I’d imagine that during the summer it would be a lot busier than when we were there.

The town will become more developed over time, I believe. Though not obvious from strolling around, I understand that it is still rebuilding from a devastating earthquake about ten years (???) ago, and that more hotels are coming into the area, one being build right on the other side of town from the HP. It would not surprise me if on the one hand it became much more crowded over the next decade but on the other hand some nice things came with that, such as upscale restaurants for those interested.

To the south, of the hotel, you can take a great, scenic stroll along a path and then along a beach, past various beach houses (some quite fancy) that I guess folks use mainly for summer and/or weekend homes. Especially early morning, there were lots of pelicans and other birds to be seen along the shore, along with some really large and kind of interesting jellyfish in the water or washed up on the shore. The walk ends at the beginning of a desert nature reserve, with signs to stay out, though I didn’t see any sign of any guards that would keep one from walking farther.

From the hotel, you’re mainly looking out to sea and at an arid Martian landscape in the hills across the water, as this is a desert area. Kind of dramatic and beautiful in its own way.

This was the end of our Peru trip, so we were mostly in the mood for just hanging out. But there were good options for half-day and full-day trips to bop around the region. If we’d stayed longer, we would have availed of those. (Even though wine and pisco tasting trips could be part of those itineraries, I would not include them if I were you. Let’s just say that Peruvian wine has a long ways to go to be decent, even in the opinion of this easily satisfied wine non-expert, and that pisco is best tasted in pisco sours.)

Weather/climate/when to go

Paracas gets virtually no rain. It does get fog, but when we were there (mid-September) the fog was burning off by about 8 or 9 a.m. I believe that during June-August the fog lasts a lot longer into the day, so those contemplating a trip then might check into this more carefully. You wouldn't want to be there if there was a good chance of it being fog-shrouded all day. (Taking the bus down from fog-bound Lima, which is shrouded for much of the year, I was a bit worried as much of our trip was in fog. But the climate is less foggy down toward Paracas and we were in sun for the last half or third of the trip.) I believe the temperature only got up into the low 70s during the day when we were there, but in the bright sun this was easily warm enough for shorts. The timing of our visit there thus worked out well as we got sunny weather in both the Sacred Valley (where the dry season generally lasts into September) and by the coast. Of course, the best and hottest weather in Paracas would be during the Peruvian winter, but that would also be the most crowded time there. As always, there are trade-offs.

Conclusion

Even with the noise from the music and the occasional service glitches, we we really liked the hotel and the area. What with the bus trips, it was a bit of a hassle to get to, but was worth it for us. I'd highly recommend it.