The Poor Man's Galapagos - Paracas, Peru

Interested in watching what happened in Paracas? 

​After the short and easy four hour bus ride for $20 USD from Lima we arrived to the Paracas bus station with nowhere booked to spend the night. A predicament that isn't the worst when you are traveling during the off season in a small town that's main source of income is tourism. We made the 15 minute walk into the town and checked out a few different hostels before deciding on Paracas Backpackers House which was 75 soles ($23) a night split between us three. We had a private three-person room that was pretty nice and an incredible hostel with a spacious kitchen you can use and hammocks to relax in with an rooftop view of the town you could look at for hours. A lady on the street that reeled us into this hostel also helped us book the famous tour to do in this town called “The Poor Man Galapagos” which takes you on an hour and a half boat ride to Islas Ballestas. Since the town is very VERY small with not much else to do besides the tour we decided to also book the afternoon tour with her as well. Total cost was around 45 soles for both tours which is around $14!

It was a pretty great early morning boat ride that included seeing a few islands, a bird species called boobies (not kidding!) and sea lions. We were supposed to see penguins as well but we just saw two little guys standing on one of the rocks far away. It was pretty underwhelming but always with a good attitude anything can turn out great… especially when you get to say you saw a bunch of boobies flying around. After the boat ride we went back for one hour to relax and eat at our hostel before heading out the second tour of the day. We went to meet the bus for our second tour and the first stop was a museum. It wasn't the highlight of the tour but you know got to learn some history of the places you see. Afterwards we went to a few different viewpoints that were majestic if i say so myself and then we got dropped off for an hour at Playa La Mena which was one of the nicest beaches I have been to in quite some time. We played in the water, sunbathed on the beach and wished we were able to spend more time there before going to our last destination by the water that had 5 or 6 small restaurants all serving fresh fish. Of course we ordered a huge plate of ceviche and fries to share between us 3 and it was delicious and completely worth it. After we ate it was off back to town!

That night we went to one of the two mini grocery stores there to buy produce to make dinner but unfortunately all of the produce had cockroaches and bugs all over them and look spoiled. So it was a good ol' college edition spaghetti and pasta sauce with beer for dinner. This city is a place that you would want to spend two days max just to get the day full of tours in. I would say if you are on a tight schedule or budget that this town would be alright to miss but if you have some time make your way here. We sure are glad we did. Interested in watching our adventures here? Click the youtube video above to check it out!