Daintree Rainforest Retreat — Hotel in Cow Bay

We had booked in to stay a few kms up the road in Diwan (Lync Haven) but a generator fault saw us book last minute here for $130 for one night in January (double room with 2 beds).| |We enjoyed our stay and rate the property below in terms of pros and cons:| |Pros| |• Location in Cow Bay is excellent. The property is close to the Daintree Discovery Centre and Jindalba Walks, close to Floraville and Daintree Ice Cream Company and close to Hutchinson’s Creek for swimming.||• You have two lovely hosts who like a chat and are happy to answer questions about the local area and things to do (note they have sold the property and will be transitioning to new owners in the future)||• Comfortable, well-appointed rooms opening out onto a forested courtyard that is quiet, natural and peaceful with sounds of the rainforest all around you||• Covered parking and a nice barbeque area to sit and gather with friends and family| | |Cons| |• There is no mobile phone reception in Cow Bay which means Wi-Fi is your only way of connecting to internet. Wi-Fi is provided but you need to travel down to the communal tea and coffee area to access as it doesn’t travel up to the rooms.||• No air-conditioning in the rooms – this wasn’t a big issue for us on the day as it was not super-hot, but this may not always be the case; there were two fans in the room though which helped| | |As this is essentially a motel, there is no restaurant or café included at the property so you will need to bring your own food or head to a nearby establishment. Cow Bay has limited options, however we found a place to have breakfast at Daintree Crocodylus nearby.| |Also, most of the Daintree tours leave from further up in Cape Tribulation (28km/35 mins) and whilst it is a magnificent drive it is also a long drive which you don’t want to do up and back too many times. So if you have multiple tours booked over several days, it may be a better option to stay in Cape Tribulation. That said, the drive is through some of the oldest rainforest in the world and is great opportunity to spot cassowaries. We saw a male and his chick just after the Oliver Creek bridge not far from Cape Trib on one of...

Room cleanliness and maintenance was pretty crap... screen held on to the door with sticky tape, carpet very old and quite filthy, kitchen clean on the outside but all the cupboards and draws dirty inside. No tea tea towel or face washer. Coffee/tea jar had rusty lid and it was all stale inside. Linen floor in dining area and beds/linen was clean, but windows, blinds, walls, under beds all very dusty. Found an old, mouldy bra and old child's dummy from past guests under the edge of the bed when I reached down to get something I had dropped.....Bleach stains on towels..... Toasters old and stained/dirty... Fridge rusty and wobbled/tipped forward every time you open it, and they had a vase on top that nearly fell on me (lucky I caught it). Very lacking in most basic cutlery or mugs for coffee/tea.....I grew up here for 20 years and did housekeeping at two of the local resorts as my first jobs, so understand more than most the challenges of housekeeping in the tropics; the maintenance on this place has slipped well below acceptable even given those challenges. Staff were super nice but owners need to spend some money as most of the cleaning issues seemed to stem from lack of maintenance/age of the furnishings. A shame because the room sizes and beautiful location have real potential to be a...

We stayed 2 nights. |After that the manager showed us our room we realized there was no water in the bathroom. We called him 3 times, he didn’t answer. Our neighbor sent him a text to fix the problem. |We saw that the Fly screen has a hole, and the sheets were stained. |There was no hot water and no air conditioner. There was no wifi in our room. |The second night there was lots of little noises we couldn’t sleep. After one hour we saw a mouse who was eating the fly screen. The mouse stayed 2 hours in our room at midnight. After moving the furniture to get her out we saw Mouse poops at the ground behind the fridge and dirt on the ground. |The pictures are false advertising. The picture were taken when the place opened I think. The motel should...