Borinquen Thermal Resort - Rincón de la Vieja — Hotel in Cañas Dulces

The resort is as pretty as the pictures on the website suggest. It has attractive cottages, each with its own small deck, lovely lawns and a nice pool (although in need of some small repair). All of that earns the resort one star. It has activities such as zip-lining and horseback riding and a good, small spa. That earns it a second star. It has an amiable staff who do a good job. That earns it a third. ||But (and there is a but) there is nothing else that affords it a fourth star. And you should know, before you go, that there are a number of salient problems which threaten the three stars accorded above — although that will be yours to decide.||Here are the four salient problems we observed:||1. Borinquen is at the end of the sort of poorly surfaced road that is common in Costa Rica. This is unexceptional, but this road has no services and it winds for twenty kilometers into the hills. Half of this road cannot be travelled at more than twenty kilometers per hour. If you do the math, this means that you are unlikely to be going anywhere else during your stay, so you had best come prepared with all you need and be prepared to like what the resort provides for the rest.||2. What the resort provides is much less than you would expect. To begin, the pool has no shade (zero — no trees, no umbrellas, no poolside palapas) and the Costa Rican sun, of course, can be hot. There are also no proper poolside lounge chairs, despite their appearance on the website. Please don’t imagine that you’ll be hanging out for long periods at the pool, nor that youll find much of a social atmosphere there, for this same reason. Secondly, the resort has only one restaurant (despite mention of two on the website). It provides the identical, limited (but reasonably priced) menu for both lunch and dinner. Food preparation is adequate, but no more. So please don’t imagine you’ll be hanging out in the dining room. Thirdly, there is no bar area, no central gathering place of any sort, in fact, and no indoor activities of any kind. So when you’re not participating in a paid activity such as zip-lining, bird-watching or having a massage, please don’t imagine you’ll be hanging out anywhere except your room. ||3. Your room, while charming, will be ill-provisioned — no robes, no standard bathroom amenities such as skin lotion or the like, no paper or pen to accompany the writing desk, no water in the mini-fridge, no mini-bar and, most remarkably, no screens in the windows nor fan in the ceiling. And please don’t forget that even at 1600 meters above sea level, you will be surrounded by central American jungle and evening will bring mosquitoes. So please don’t imagine that you will be enjoying the evening breezes while you sleep, because you will almost certainly need to keep all your windows shut and the AC on. (Oh — and while on the subject of rooms, please do not imagine that you can hang out in your room on Thursdays, for early that morning a small army of orange-shirted gardeners will appear with lawn mowers and weed-whackers. If you’re in your cottage, and anything like us, their roar will eventually force you out. You might then go to the empty dining room, where you can play cards, or find another pass-time, until 2 p.m., when the gardeners will leave (and then reappear on Friday morning).||4. The staff, while uniformly friendly, is unfortunately powerless to change or even address any of these shortcomings. The resort is owned and operated by a large multinational corporation headquartered in Liberia, more than an hour away, and has chosen to post no manager of account on site. The folks in reception will telephone “the manager” if you so request, but that person will never answer their calls nor respond to your request for a call-back. The tour guides will claim they have no idea who “the boss” actually is. You may be as polite as you like, but please don’t imagine there will be a response of any kind except a sad, accommodating smile and the declaration that, “I’m sorry, but that is outside my area of responsibility.”||In closing, our guess (and it is merely a guess) is that the Borinquen may enjoy little or no repeat clientele. Day groups appear via bus for activities and lunch and then they leave. These people experience few or none of the problems an overnight guest will confront, of course, and this may be why resort management has made no effort to correct so many obvious shortcomings.||Borinquen is pretty as a postcard, that much is true, but unfortunately saddled with the various...

The resort is as pretty as the pictures on the website suggest. It has attractive cottages, each with its own small deck, lovely lawns and a nice pool (although in need of some small repair). All of that earns the resort one star. It has activities such as zip-lining and horseback riding and a good, small spa. That earns it a second star. It has an amiable staff who do a good job. That earns it a third. ||But (and there is a but) there is nothing else that affords it a fourth star. And you should know, before you go, that there are a number of salient problems which threaten the three stars accorded above — although that will be yours to decide.||Here are the four salient problems we observed:||1. Borinquen is at the end of the sort of poorly surfaced road that is common in Costa Rica. This is unexceptional, but this road has no services and it winds for twenty kilometers into the hills. Half of this road cannot be travelled at more than twenty kilometers per hour. If you do the math, this means that you are unlikely to be going anywhere else during your stay, so you had best come prepared with all you need and be prepared to like what the resort provides for the rest.||2. What the resort provides is much less than you would expect. To begin, the pool has no shade (zero — no trees, no umbrellas, no poolside palapas) and the Costa Rican sun, of course, can be hot. There are also no proper poolside lounge chairs, despite their appearance on the website. Please don’t imagine that you’ll be hanging out for long periods at the pool, nor that youll find much of a social atmosphere there, for this same reason. Secondly, the resort has only one restaurant (despite mention of two on the website). It provides the identical, limited (but reasonably priced) menu for both lunch and dinner. Food preparation is adequate, but no more. So please don’t imagine you’ll be hanging out in the dining room. Thirdly, there is no bar area, no central gathering place of any sort, in fact, and no indoor activities of any kind. So when you’re not participating in a paid activity such as zip-lining, bird-watching or having a massage, please don’t imagine you’ll be hanging out anywhere except your room. ||3. Your room, while charming, will be ill-provisioned — no robes, no standard bathroom amenities such as skin lotion or the like, no paper or pen to accompany the writing desk, no water in the mini-fridge, no mini-bar and, most remarkably, no screens in the windows nor fan in the ceiling. And please don’t forget that even at 1600 meters above sea level, you will be surrounded by central American jungle and evening will bring mosquitoes. So please don’t imagine that you will be enjoying the evening breezes while you sleep, because you will almost certainly need to keep all your windows shut and the AC on. (Oh — and while on the subject of rooms, please do not imagine that you can hang out in your room on Thursdays, for early that morning a small army of orange-shirted gardeners will appear with lawn mowers and weed-whackers. If you’re in your cottage, and anything like us, their roar will eventually force you out. You might then go to the empty dining room, where you can play cards, or find another pass-time, until 2 p.m., when the gardeners will leave (and then reappear on Friday morning).||4. The staff, while uniformly friendly, is unfortunately powerless to change or even address any of these shortcomings. The resort is owned and operated by a large multinational corporation headquartered in Liberia, more than an hour away, and has chosen to post no manager of account on site. The folks in reception will telephone “the manager” if you so request, but that person will never answer their calls nor respond to your request for a call-back. The tour guides will claim they have no idea who “the boss” actually is. You may be as polite as you like, but please don’t imagine there will be a response of any kind except a sad, accommodating smile and the declaration that, “I’m sorry, but that is outside my area of responsibility.”||In closing, our guess (and it is merely a guess) is that the Borinquen may enjoy little or no repeat clientele. Day groups appear via bus for activities and lunch and then they leave. These people experience few or none of the problems an overnight guest will confront, of course, and this may be why resort management has made no effort to correct so many obvious shortcomings.||Borinquen is pretty as a postcard, that much is true, but unfortunately saddled with the various...

This hotel purports to be 4-star and was supposed to be the culmination of our 2 week visit. It was worse than disappointing. 4-star hotels are supposed to be luxurious, make guests feel pampered, and make life easy. It’s a beautiful location and campus. There is some cool wildlife - yellow and black birds with hanging basket nests - Oropendolas. The accommodations are nice and reasonably comfortable

The “everyone has to deal with” problems at this hotel: The entrance road is horrendous. It isn’t just dirt or gravel, it’s some sort of hardened jagged potholed semi-cemented intermittent surface. Even if everything else were perfect, I’ll never go back because of the road. The reception/lobby is far from noticeably elegant (a requirement of a 4-star) - there are two “office type” desks, one of which is check-in. There is no normal bureau or other typical hotel lobby stuff, no concierge, etc. Parking is only at reception - you can’t have your car anywhere near your room, so you have to take everything you want with you in their shuttle vans which you have to call (& tip) every time. It’s a steep climb up and down everywhere on this campus. The pool and hot springs are at the very bottom, so a hassle and not relaxing. They are about 20 stories down a steep hill. This is no place for someone with any mobility impairment. There are no menus for the restaurants available. Not in the lobby, not in your room, and not online either, just at each venue. So to see what available, you must go (climb) to each food service place to see what they offer. The restaurant is very limited and there are almost no other options. They ask you to make a reservation for dinner at a specific time when you check in, even before you get to your room. The room service menu is a sad photocopy The campus map is a sad photocopy and poorly designed with lots of confusion - not at all crisp, clean, or easy to read. Like almost everywhere in Guanacaste (but not in some other parts of Costa Rica), the restaurant staff regularly lie say tip isn’t included. They have a big line to leave additional tip even though there is a 10% service charge included by law that is the tip. The restaurant management hides a bad exchange rate. They charge in US$, offer an option to pay in Colones, and have a 10% margin to convert back to colones, upon which I had to pay another % to my bank. You’re better off paying in US$. Most of the staff speak very poor English, in contrast to almost every other place we’ve been in Costa Rica where they generally spoke excellent English

The Whopper: Because of the lack of access to our car, on our 2nd to last day we packed some of our unneeded things and took a couple of our bags in the shuttle to the car before we left for an activity. Sofia at reception was told by the shuttle driver we had put luggage in our car (I have no problem with staff keeping the office informed of what’s going on on campus). But instead of checking our file to see if we had any unpaid bills (we were fully prepaid), Sofia seems to have jumped to the conclusion that we needed to be stopped at the security gate and without explanation demanded that we return to Reception before being allowed to leave. Upon returning to Reception, we were asked to explain why we had put luggage in our car. I was already pretty unhappy with the place based on the previous list of 12 problems, so I demanded to speak with the manager. They pretty much ignored me and checked our file and account to realized that we were in fact pre-paid and had no outstanding bills on file. They said they wanted to make sure we were going to return with their key. I again demanded to speak with the manager and they looked at me blankly and said nothing. I asked if the manager was coming. They finally said “No.” So I left and was finally allowed through the gate. I was absolutely stunned that instead of doing what’s best for customer service, they seem to default to a paranoid assumption. This place is not run...