Dantica Cloud Forest Lodge — Hotel in Copey

I could easily write two separate reviews for Dantica Cloud Forest Lodge. So I'll split it into two parts.||Part 1 The location the birds and the scenery.|Dantica is located towards the top of the Sevegre valley and has some stunning views. Watching the clouds drift in and out of the valley is very relaxing and when evening approaches, the temperatures drop rapidly, reminding you that you are at the top of a very tall mountain.||The birds in and around the lodge are spectacular! so many species, it's really hard to keep up. I booked a couple of tours with the lodge, The first was scheduled to be a hike up Cerro de la Muerte (which I didn't ask for). ||The guide, Carlos was very obliging when I explained I was there for the photography and we changed the activity to a birding walk along the Sevegre river at San Geradon de Dota. Carlos is so knowledgable about vast range of species and his eagle eyes showed me more than I would have ever seen on my own. I took so many cracking photos, it's going to take me a year to process them all.||The next day started very early (5:15) with a quetzal tour. Again Carlos was the guide and with his 20 years experience, he knew exactly where to look. We were very successful and I had a great opportunity to photograph several males and a female - all before breakfast.||I took another tour, again with Carlos, an we took a leisurely drive/walk on the upper section of the valley road. Once again we weren't disappointed. The valley is rich with so many beautiful species. ||I would thoroughly recommend anyone visiting to take at least one tour with Carlos. he is so good at his job.||Part 2. The Lodge and the Restaurant|The lodge itself is very pretty. the buildings are all designed in a traditional Columbian style and have pretty of room inside. I was upgraded to a Junior Suite which had an enormous hot tub in the bathroom. I made use of that to warm up in the cold evenings.||The grounds have several trails which I would describe as "testing". There are some gems inside the forest within the grounds - when I say gems, I mean birds like the white throated mountain gem humming bird which looked like a fairy floating about between the trees. There are also plenty of fairly tame, spotted mountain quails scurrying about on the forest floor.||So far, so good, Now I'll come to the restaurant. I think the best phrase I can use for this is style over substance. The menu is vast but the quality of the food is mediocre. For my first dinner, I ordered the steak. I'm sad to say my shoe was probably more tender and tastier. It was a huge disappointment and I decided to only choose dishes that were hard yo mess up after that. It's a good thing there are plenty of trout dishes on the menu, and the trout is probably the best choice to avoid disappointment.||The service in the restaurant was pretty slow and sometimes non-existent. There were plenty of staff, but if they weren't taking you initial orders or delivering food, they were all hiding in the kitchen. There were a couple of times when I thought I'd like another beer or a look at the deserts, but there wasn't a should to ask. The restaurant needs to have at least one person patrolling - and they also need to ask the quality question "how is your food". It would have made a huge difference. ||The last gripe about the restaurant is... there are no cocktails. I asked for a Gin and Tonic on my first night, only tore told "we don't have cocktails. You can have beer whiskey or wine."||If the restaurant sharpened up, this would be a dream of a place to visit. It's top quality in most aspects but really let down by...

We rented out one of (very spacious!) the 2 room cabins and it was truly wonderful! Also such a great price for everything that you get (seriously I had to keep doing a double take on how good and low the price was)! Basically, this is a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house (with separate, smaller rooms for toilets) with a beautiful patio accessible from the living room. Each bathroom has its own jacuzzi and a lovely rain shower! The master room has a large round jacuzzi, and the other room has a smaller, but still very nice jacuzzi tub. Each has huge windows that look out into the forest/valley. There was also plenty of hot water to fill both of these at once so we really got to enjoy it! The room we had was pretty close to reception, but pay attention when you book because some of the rooms are far away. We still had help carrying our bags to our room in either case though.

The rooms and jacuzzis are clean and spotless. There was also a mini fridge with extra water and they even had bottles of wine from the mini bar! This made the trip really special. We would sit on the patio or jacuzzi with our glasses of wine and enjoy the view (often the view included hummingbirds).

My only 2 gripes were that 1) there was a mildew smell in the master toilet room and the fan was broken so it was difficult to air it out. I hope they can fix this soon! The other gripe 2) was that the paint from the ceiling in the master room would sometimes fall off onto the bed leaving tiny bits of debris. I was really confused at first because it looked like dirt. Only happened twice though. Maybe when it gets windy??

As far as heating, the rooms had a heater/AC heat pump unit that cooled/heated very well. They also had small ethanol fireplaces in the rooms (they do smell like lighter fluid when you first fill them, but this smell airs out quickly if you just open the patio door/window). Some reviewers said that the fireplaces were small and didn't heat sufficiently, but in my room I thought they were very warm. I even got too hot and had to turn them off after a couple of hours! (I'm from a cold climate though).

The tours that you could book through the hotel were also so much fun and a great price, even for private tours. Our guide, Carlos was just the best! We saw so many birds, including the quetzal (twice! Once during the quetzal tour, and once during a daytime birding walk).

The restaurant was good, but to be honest, the others in the valley are better. I'm glad that we had our own car for this trip because we enjoyed trying out the different places in the valley. The main road was honestly not that bad too, even at night (but please note I'm from Washington, so we're used to mountain roads). Just be sure to have a 4X4 and...

Really mixed feelings about this place. ||The good:|1. The location and setting are stunning - wonderful views, great walks around their trails, incredible birdlife. We highly recommend walking the road down to San Gerardo and then on to the waterfalls (be prepared for some scrambling and rickety bridges over fast running water!) and then back up. A whole day’s walk (17km) but fantastic.|2. The quetzal tour - Carlos was great and we saw male and female quetzals, absolutely beautiful.|3. The staff are friendly, hard-working and attentive. |4. The breakfasts were delicious, with lots of choice, and our meals in the restaurant were good but portions were a little large for us and there wasn’t a huge choice for vegetarians.||The not so good:|1. The water in our room was brown - so much sediment/sand in it that it left visible grit in the sink and shower. We were told the water was drinkable, but it clearly wasn’t. We were told the water was brown because the filter had just been changed but it stayed like that for our three night stay. To be fair, staff were very happy to give us free bottled water, but small bottles and we hate the single use plastic burden of this.|2. The roof leaked! When the toilet was flushed, water came through the roof, dripped through the wall mounted heater/ air con unit and onto the bed. Pillows and bedding were soaked. When we mentioned this our bedding was changed and the roof leak ‘fixed’ but we were worried about using an electric heater that had been flooded with water! At no point was a room change offered. |3. It wasn’t particularly clean.|4. The bathroom was damp with brown mould/mildew visible on the white walls.|5. Apart from the restaurant, there’s no food/snacks available. We often don’t want a big lunch after a large breakfast, but the nearest shop is a small souvenir place 2km up the hill or a mini-market 6km...