Hotel Margarita — Hotel in Bahía Drake

This was the second time we stayed at Hotel Margarita and it will be the last. The hotel has fallen into disrepair and policy changes make it very unwelcoming. ||||1- The hotel no longer takes credit cards, they only accept PayPal, Snipe or cash, no exceptions, bring lots of cash. ||2- The hotel restaurant is only open for breakfast and dinner and vast nothingness in between. From 9am until 6pm the chef and wait staff just sit in the closed restaurant. You can’t get anything to drink, nothing to eat and there is NO ice on site, the restaurant won’t give you anything. It used to be nice to return to the hotel after a long day out on the water and have a drink and snack. But you can’t even get ice for your water. My suggestion is to bring your own cooler with water, drinks, fruit, and lots of ice. ||3- There are no fans in guest rooms, which would be helpful to move around the AC. Since you are outside all day in the heat, having fans in guest rooms to move air around would allow you to leave your glass doors open and have fresh air. Going from AC back out to the heat several times a day will make you sick, trust me. I live in Costa Rica, lived here over 8 years and use AC rarely, but ceiling fans are a must. ||4- The outside noise is brutal! Loud competing boom box Spanish music surrounds the hotel. Dogs fighting, motorcycles, quads and lots of noise make your evenings any but Pura Vida. Stay outside of town, if possible, you won’t regret it. ||5- Everywhere we ate (hotel restaurant closed) you must pay cash, PayPal or Snipe, like I said, come prepared. It seems to be the new normal in DB now, everywhere, even the little sodas and mercado’s no longer take plastic. ||6- There are no lights anywhere along the outside walkways at night! Bring your flashlight and I suspect a lawsuit is their future when someone slips and falls on the wet tiles from bathers exiting the pool. ||7- The only positive thing I can say about the hotel is the food at the restaurant was still good. Breakfast was bland but the 2 dinners we had during our 5-day stay were decent but still not as good as our first experience.||8- Looking for Pura Vida,...

Hotel Margarita Drake Bay, CR What can I say about hotel margarita except that there is two of them. When you book make sure you are staying at either the one in Drake Bay, or at the one in Sierpe! This is important if you are traveling on a budget because the boats only leave at certain times. We stayed at both hotels and were very pleased with the service and friendly people during this entire trip. Hotel Margarita, Drake Bay is what this review is about. I couldn’t be more pleased with their service and feeling of being made at home. What a wonderful little community! We picked this hotel because of the amenities and the price. We were not disappointed. They offer luxury settings with impeccable decor and lighting at a very affordable price. They are handicap accessible and located walking distance to the beach. My favorite part is the one way glass that means while you sip your coffee, you can see the jungle just feet from the window and you are completely private. I watched the birds for hours. They are so diverse and entertaining! The beds were clean and comfortable, and is a secure yet inviting setting. They had a guy waiting for us at the boat to pick us up which was awesome! It only cost us 2,000c or about $3.50. The staff have been extremely helpful and informative. We enjoyed a delicious veggie pesto pasta dish at their restaurant and spoke to the them for a bit. Such vibrant culture, these people are amazing. I even got a photo with them. Their bathrooms were clean and everyone was smiling and happy to be there which speaks volumes about the setting. They went above and beyond to make our stay as comfortable as possible and I appreciated it so much that I wanted to write this review for them. I highly recommend making this a stop on your tour through Drake Bay, this is defiantly a highlight to my travels and a memory that will...

A very modern and really nice hotel for Agujitas-Downtown. Rooms are spacious, the bathroom is very large and the shower is at a comfortable temperature with good water pressure. The staff is very friendly and helpful in organizing tours, the food and drinks tasty, though relatively expensive. Rooms are exceptionally clean, daily towel change, quiet refrigerator. We even got a bottle of wine and some sweets for Valentine’s Day. There is a large parking lot across the street and it is a 5 minute walk to the ocean, you have a nice view of the rainforest. So all in all a great hotel, But:

But what made us deduct one stars: We chose this hotel also because of the pool (for our daughter). And the water in the pool is an absolute disaster! It is totally overacidified, the PH value is disastrous. Unfortunately, we were twice in the pool and the little one had nasty skin irritations. Thus, the pool was to be avoided with children! They were aware of the problem but couldn’t get the chems to fix it. In addition, the necessary mosquito nets are missing in the rooms despite AC. Who is a guest in Drake and does not want to be completely eaten by mosquitoes, will miss these nets very much. We are quite plagued because of these two shortcomings and thus not 100% happy with the hotel.

And one thing is particularly important to us: the hotel has mirrored glass everywhere for heat protection reasons. Unfortunately, this leads to the birds regularly fluttering against the windows. Very very unfortunate, a few stickers would be very...