HOTEL MINCA - LA CASONA — Hotel in Magdalena

Where to start..... this is a difficult review to write. My advice - look elsewhere. We were scheduled to spend 13 nights at Hotel Minca - La Casona at the end of our 3 month adventures in Costa Rica and Colombia. We only stayed 2 nights.

First: rooms were clean enough with a fan, breakfast was included, patio with hummingbirds was nice. This is a marginal place to stay for one or maybe two nights while passing through to go up further into the mountains.

We booked the best room in the place - the Superior King Room. The cleaning person does her best, but the room was dark, dank, and the towels were so stiff and scratchy that you could almost stand them up. I thought some scrub towels had been forgotten in the room, but these were our hand towels. There was no cross-ventilation, so even though it got cooler in the night, the room stayed hot.

I tried to find a pleasant place to sit outside, but the sitting area was on the other side of the building and uncomfortable. The view of the ill-cared-for grounds was unpleasant. There were no fans except on hot side by TV. Beer bottle sat on chair in garden the whole time

The pool - ugh - even though it did not look clean, the first day there I put my feet in, and the water felt slimy. Really gross. No one swimming. Ever.

First day there, went to restaurant during lunch hours, and Sergio told us he had a group of 15 coming in and we needed to wait until he took care of them. We thought this odd since we were guests at the hotel. The group did not arrive. We were served our lunch, but it gave us a feeling of not being a priority for this business.

The included breakfast was a small plate of fruit, eggs, and toast. It was ok, but the juice tasted like Tang, and for Colombia being the home of "Juan Valdez", coffee was definitely in short supply here! A teacup size cup was brought to the table, less than half full. The second morning, the wait person never returned to our table. We got the message. It seemed to us that this message was that they would do only the bare minimum for us. We paid $76 per night, in advance as they requested, and were planning on being their guests for 13 nights. This was not a good message under these circumstances.

We wanted to like this hotel! The reviews had some warnings in them, but not too bad. We should have listened to the warnings.

Minca itself sounded like a relaxed small village in a mountainous natural area with vistas, birds, and some interesting restaurants. Instead, it appears to be a stopping off place to get on the tour jeep, or hop a moto, and go somewhere else. So, I think most people only stay a night or two at the hotel, which is probably bearable.

We knew staying 13 nights was impossible at hotel, but especially being in a remote area in a foreign country, we did not want to offend people there by complaining about the hotel to them. We decided to pack up and just say that we had friends in Santa Marta. The owner assumed we were invited to stay with them, and we just let him assume that.

After we left. I checked to see if the Superior King Room was listed as available on booking websites. It was. Almost every day, it was listed as available, then listed as sold, sometimes for two days at a time. The reason I was checking was that I didn't want to request a partial refund if they hadn't been able to re-sell the room. Since they did re-sell it, and now had double the price, I wrote and asked for them to consider a partial refund. The response was that it wasn't being re-sold, it was being used by a friend of Sergio's. This was not true as I could clearly track the room being posted each day on multiple websites and the room being sold and the hotel being sold out most of the days we paid for.

It was our decision to leave the hotel. The hotel was not required to refund anything to us, but the fairness and courtesy of a partial refund, since they re-rented the room for the 11 nights we paid for, would have made us feel better about the whole experience. Please learn from our sharing of what we know...

At arrival wanted to take a shower and noted mold in the bathroom and in the shower curtain. Asked the staff to change rooms but they were fully booked and indicated that they would happily replace the shower curtain but that it’s not available currently. Went to bed and noted that my pillow also had black moldy spots in it, went with it to the reception the next morning and it was replaced, without even mentioning it. Furthermore, the pillow itself and the pillow are made of some sort of polyester material which you would expect for four year olds to prevent them from ruining the bed when they wet the sheets.

Wanted to stay the next day at the pool but upon arrival there we saw that it was almost NOTHING like the pictures in the brochure. The water level was 30 cm lower than normal and the outer pool was filled with sand. Also, the large nets (hammock) which they advertise with were removed.

Staff was friendly but not proactive in resolving any issue. Breakfast was good and view on the valley was good was well. Location very close to the city centre of minca.

Overall, would say that this hotel needs A LOT of love, catch up on maintenance and on cleaning. Before that, would strongly advise...

As a TripAdvisor DESTINATION EXPERT travel is my hobby & passion as I have 31 years of exploring Colombia and now living 5 years in Medellin and visiting just about every city, village and beach - it is my pleasure to provide my experiences of my stay at the Hotel Minca La Casona.||||A friendly welcome at the reception, solid friendly staff, they actually upgraded me to a bigger/better room (I had a private room) which was a nice gesture, the breakfast was good, the coffee was good, I did take a swim in the frigid pool, I ended up staying for 4 days then knew it was time to move down the mountain back to Santa Marta and get some ocean swimming in.||||I have stayed in more hotels and hostels then I could ever remember and this one is one of the better ones, certainly in my top 10.||||I can easily give it 4 solid stars and the only thing that prevented me from a 5 Star review is only that the rooms/grounds are dated.||||When I return to Minca I would without...