Costeño River Minca — Hotel in Magdalena

This is a nice hostel and the pictures you see do it justice. i stayed in the dorm and the bed is comfy and the mosquito net was in great condition (all beds in the dorm had it). The shared showers didn't really have quality shower heads, but manageable. The in-house restaurant has good food (loved the arroz a la marinera). Breakfast was included. Didn't really have guests that like to socialize during my stay so kind of dead atmosphere but the staff are nice and I talked to them more than the other guests.

David, Kevin and Carlos, the receptionists I met, were very nice, helpful, spoke good English, and they can help you plan your whole stay and activities in Minca. They can call a taxi or moto-taxi if you need one. Giving them my best reviews for receptionists.

There is a stream/river at the side of the hostel and it makes for a nice ambiance with the rushing water sounds, and you can also dip in there if you want! There are yoga classes (though I didn't participate in them).

Overall nice hostel but note that it's kind of near the end of an interior road and walking to the town center is at least 15mins. Nothing is really near it other than residential houses and other hostels. Great if you want to be quite isolated. Not great if you are looking for a social hostel.

At the end of your stay, you'll pay for things you purchased like in their restaurant, etc, just pay attention to their total bill. I had an extra 14k COP charge which I didn't know where it came from and when I asked them, they said it was "maybe" a service charge. Kinda questionable why they weren't...

Costeño river... luxery hotel or local youth hangout?

Upon arrival at Costeño river (at 1pm) we were told we'd have to wait till 2pm before we coule check in. No problem, the check in time was stated to be from 2pm so we had no issue with that. Then when 2pm came around they told us we'd have to wait another 30 minutes, because they "forgot" to fix the curtains. After we finally were allowed to enter our room, we didn't get the room key until 8pm that evening. Very useful when all your valuables are in that room. There also was no safe for us to put our money, passports, important stuff in.

Once in our room the bed was very small (like 1.40m wide, by 1.60m long) way too small for the average traveler. Besides that the bed was hard like a rock. The room also had no way to block out the light on the top windows. Resulting in the sun on your face by 6.30am.

We stayed at Costeño river for 3 nights and not once our room was cleaned. Even the little trashcan in our bathroom wasn't emptied (which was gross, since you aren't allowed to throw toilet paper in the toilet in Colombia).

The pool area is really nice! So nice that local youth come over everyday from 1pm till 11pm, blasting their loud music, smoking weed and completely taking over the space.

Then we get too the laundry service, compared to other places (luxurious ones and less luxurious ones) this was very expensive here. With us paying 40.000pesos (~8euros) for one bag of laundry.

In conclusion the price/quality ratio was off by A LOT! As you pay the price of a luxury resort and basically get a 1...

I was going to leave a better review because the hotel itself is fine, the staff nice and the communal areas beautiful but this is the first place I’ve ever stayed in where I’ve changed accommodation whilst staying there. Before we arrived the hotel messaged to inform us that we needed to pay in cash even though the money was supposed to come out before we arrived. The rooms down by the river are tiny and boiling hot on arrival but there is a fan and it does cool down at night. These rooms are also completely open to the elements and the beds are TINY too! Either your head is touching the dried leaves that the slanted wall is made out of or your feet are sticking out of the end making the mosquito net entirely redundant. These rooms are EXTREMELY overpriced for what they are! Having barely slept, I awoke in the morning and found my bag ripped open and destroyed. I told the man at reception that he should warn people that this could happen if they leave food in their bags and he lied and said that he had told us on arrival. If this is a common problem then they should also have signs up in the room reminding people. The views of the river from the hostel are nice but the other views look nothing like the pictures and are clearly taken from the top rooms to which not everybody has access. They did refund us for the two nights that we didn’t stay which was kind of them but I wish we hadn’t bothered coming. There are much nicer places further up that are far more...