Hotel Uka Mana — Hotel in Easter Island

We stayed in this hotel as a part of our three month travels throughout the Pacific and South America. We traveled with our baby son.||This hotel turned out to be a disappointment for us. The lady running it is very sweet and friendly, and they seem to try their best, but that’s just not enough to run a hotel.||The issues:|1. The main reason why we booked this hotel was that they claim to have a common/public kitchen (I checked Booking.com, TA and their own homepage). This is not correct. There’s a kitchen, but there’s a padlock on the door, and a sign saying “staff only”. This was a problem for us travelling with a baby, and in need of cleaning bottles, preparing baby food etc. |But not only is there no kitchen. There isn’t a kettle or anything in the room either! So there’s no way to prepare even simple foods. The staff put out a thermos with hot water every night at 10 PM. But hot water from a thermos is not kitchen facilities!|We asked politely if we could use the microwave in the kitchen from time to time, and borrowed some china. The staff were nice about this, but we we felt like a burden. ||2. We tried to use their laundry service. But the machine only washes with cold water!Not tepid, but freezing - the machine isn’t connected to the hot water! I asked what they do with towels and linen, and apparently they only use cold water for that too. I find that quite unappealing and unhygienic, for a hotel, to clean linen in ice cold water. |We ended up using a laundry in town||3. They have issues with their hot water. It takes up to fives minutes until the water in the shower is warm. And then it’s very unstable, swapping from warm to hot to cold. Sometimes it never gets warm at all. I had one cold and one freezing shower during our stay.||4. The location is pretty far from town. We were prepared for this, and thought it didn’t matter as we were going to rent a car anyways. The kitchen facilities were more important for us. But as they didn’t have a kitchen, we definitely should have chosen a hotel closer to town.||5. We rented a car from the hotel, for 4 days. The car was nice, and the price was fair. However, they mixed up the dates, so after 3 days they suddenly asked for the keys back, as they had rented the car to someone else. First, they took the keys away from us, but after we made them aware of the mistake, we got the keys back and kept the car for another day. |Then, the next morning (the day we were to give the car back), they asked for the keys and car again. This was two hours earlier than we were supposed to give the car back. Yet again, they had rented the car to someone else. |We emptied the car in a hurry and told them that we hadn’t had time to fill gasoline yet, as our rental wasn’t finished for another 2-3 hours. |They took the keys and disappeared. Half an hour later, they came and complained that the tank wasn’t filled up. We explained again that we hadn’t had the time, as they had taken the keys two hours early and before we had time to go to the gas station. They then gave the keys to my husband and asked him to fill the tank in a hurry. It was all very uncomfortable and poorly handled.||On the positive side, the hotel is fairly new, and the common room is spacious (although somewhat dirty). And the free city tour they provided the first day was a great offer. But we would never have stayed...

I'm so glad I went to the island and this hotel was a good choice. All the hotel staff were friendly and helpful. The room was clean and the bed comfortable. There was plenty of hot water for showering. The wifi at the hotel was actually reasonable - I believe they have Starlink connected. I was able to have video calls with only slight interruptions during a heavy downpour. A cold breakfast was included with different breads, juices, and cold cuts. The hotel is a 20-45 minute walk to most of the stores/museums in town. On the days I had scheduled tours, tour guides picked me up and dropped me off. On the other days, I walked into town and was prepared for intermittent rain showers. I would guess that most people would want to rent a car if traveling often between this hotel and the city proper. I saw a couple of local (not international) car rental places in the middle of the city. The traffic is moderate and subdued, so I wouldn't hesitate to rent a car if I were to visit again. There are dogs and roosters that make noise regularly, presumably all over the island. You can shut the windows and filter some of the noise out. There are steep stairs inside with irregular depths and heights you'll want be careful on. There's a nice loft area upstairs with...

Our host meet us at the airport and swept us away for a fun tour of the down town area. The hotel is clean and lovely. The staff doesn't speak much English so be prepared to use a lot of sign language if you don't speak Spanish. The breakfast was simple and the same every day. We choose to go into town one morning to have breakfast because we wanted to get our day started early. There aren't many options in town either so tough it out have breakfast at the hotel then stop for a lovely lunch someplace along the way. They have a small refrigerator available if you want to have some snacks. The hotel is about a 25 minute walk into town. We rented a motorcycle so getting around was not an...