El Caminante Bar & Bungalows was once the famous Swallows Motel, hangout to the rich and famous in the 1940s, but it fell into disrepair in the late 1900s. The recent renovation and upgrades to the hotel have brought it back to being one of the most amazing local hotels in the area.
Located in Capistrano Beach on Pacific Coast Highway, the historic Spanish Hacienda-style hotel was considered an example of a “Depression-era California motor court-style motel.”
Today, the hotel also features a restaurant and bar that is open to the general public with two outdoor patios and a delicious tapas menu.
The renovated rooms have been carefully detailed in the original Spanish Colonial Revival style. Every ground floor room has a private patio facing the beach including a chiminea fireplace. Each room has a huge carved wooden bed facing the ocean. There are two second-story suites with amazing ocean views
The renovations included Saltillo tile floors throughout, hand-painted Talavera tile murals, antique furniture, vintage light fixtures and hand-carved Dutch doors.
When the original hotel was built in the early 1940s, Capistrano Beach had a pier and a community center with a pool right across the street. These were later demolished, and today there is only the beach across Pacific Coast Highway. The beach can be accessed by a short walk to the south, where there is a traffic light at Palisades for crossing Pacific Coast Highway.
The hotel sits on 1.5 acres on Pacific Coast Highway right next to Palisades Drive. In the 1940s, the hotel was a popular retreat for Hollywood celebrities. It was also an example of a California motor court-style motel with a parking space for each unit. The hotel entertained many famous actors and musicians who would arrive by train or by car. If they arrived by train, the owner at the time would pick them up in one of his antique cars.
The hotel fell into such bad disrepair that in 2016 it was red-tagged by the City of Dana Point. The Artist Guild Hotels bought the deserted property in 2021 and restored and re-designed the historic property into what they call an “eclectic Spanish Hacienda.” They have recreated the original splendor of the historic hotel.
There are very few other historic beachfront hotels in the area. San Clemente has the Beachcomber Hotel just above the pier, which was abandoned in the 1940s. Dana Point had two hotels that were demolished. In the 1920s, San Clemente was supposed to have a resort that would have been built just above T-Street with over 100 rooms, but because The Great Depression started in October 1929, the project was abandoned, and today there are homes built in the area instead of the beachfront resort.
The new name, “El Caminante,” means “The Wanderer” and refers to the hotel being a place of peace and quiet refuge that a wanderer might find during their travels. The hotel is “adults only” but the restaurant welcomes families.
