Travel Tip 17
Pick a quiet hotel off the strip
Hotels are for relaxing and sleeping. Bars are for being loud. Don’t mix the two.
Bracamonte Hotel is in Huanchaco, a small surf town next to Trujillo on Peru’s northern coast.
On my most recent week in Trujillo and Huanchaco I stayed in three hotels – but only liked one of them.
The first was in Trujillo and was fine. It had a good location near the historic center and was clean and relatively quiet. It wasn’t good enough to recommend, but it was good enough for me to not complain.
The second was on the beach in Huanchaco and it had a loud rooftop restaurant and bar. The room and breakfast were okay, but it was just too loud for comfort. You don’t need to know which one it was - just go to the third hotel.
The third hotel was just right – the perfect Goldilocks combo of quiet, comfortable and near the beach.
The Bracamonte Hotel is only a ten-minute walk from the center of town but plenty far enough from the strip for it to be truly peaceful and quiet.
Things I look for in a hotel: location, reviews, and photos from guests.
Location: I look for hotels a bit away from the center of town and also check Google maps to see if there are bars on the same street. If it’s a nice place to walk or taxis are cheap, I look for a place farther from the center.
Reviews: On Google, or whatever platform you use to book hotels, check how many reviews it has before you look at what the rating is. A perfect score but only five reviews could easily be friends and family giving great reviews. I look for a place with both more reviews than the competition and a high score.
Photos: They really do say a thousand words, especially if they’re uploaded by people who have stayed there. I want to see what the room looks like, what the view out the window is and, if breakfast is included, I want to see what the food looks like. The photos people will upload to Google and online review sites can be way more realistic than the photos that hotel owners upload.
New Blog
The Top 5 Things to do in Trujillo
This blog covers the best of both Trujillo and Huanchaco. It was a packed week there, so more blogs are on the way!
New Article
This week’s article is about why I moved to Cusco and why I stay. It came out while I was in Huanchaco and my Mom texted me that I was featured on MSN before the editor even let me know that the piece was published!
I love writing about Peru and all the places I travel. I do not love writing about myself, but I’ve learned that being a freelance writer requires marketing myself - and sometimes that means writing about me.
Related Article
Tips for Managing Mental Health While Traveling
The connection will make more sense if you read the previous article before you click on this one.
This article was a lot more uncomfortable to see in print, especially since it’s in a major travel publication. While I frame it as tips for managing mental health in general, it’s a lot about how I manage mental health while traveling. I wrote it because I want to decrease the stigma of having a mental health diagnosis and because I want to make travel easier for others with a diagnosis. We’ve made progress, but to be honest, we still have a long way to go.
