Hotel La Puesta del Sol — Hotel in Monteverde

The hamlet of Monteverde is conveniently located to go hiking in the Cordillera de Tilarán from where one can overlook the Arenal Volcano and lake, and/or, to participate in nearby adrenaline pumping activities such as crossing hanging bridges at tree canopy level or even more sensational: zooming through the cloud forest, attached to zip-lines. Moreover, Monteverde is a quiet place, only a ten minutes' walk away from the more vibrant Santa Elena, a small sympathetic town that offers all the usual facilities including a major bank, large supermarket and bookstore, but, also features a very interesting herpetarium where one can observe and learn more about Costa Rican snakes, frogs, turtles, and, tarantulas.||||On the other hand, if you are a bird lover, there is probably no better place to stay than at the Hotel La Puesta Del Sol, owned by Freddy Mejias, a notorious local bird spotter thanks to whom we discovered a Quetzal, a couple of toucans and several other small beautiful birds whose names I do not recall anymore. Unfortunately, Freddy's natural warm tenderness is not reflected in his hotel (which in fact is a B&B) because in my opinion his place is far too pragmatically designed. The building itself is unattractive and pretty naked, even brought the word prefab to my mind when heavy winds rattled the roof to really upsetting volumes which made it hard to fall asleep. Aside from a few plants in pots, nature is pretty absent on the premises and even the entrance is bare soil. The very spic and span rooms are of decent size (our room contained 3 double beds) but are almost bare shells lacking every bit of cosiness. The beds (the only furniture aside from a bedside table) are large and comfortable (with clean smelling sheets!), and, the shower produced hot water be it with some difficulty, probably not just in our room since the next day I spotted Freddy bringing in 2 new boilers. Finally, the only shared space where guests can socialize and have breakfast is unfortunately set in the garage... And, there is also an in-house laundry service, which seems to be of good quality since a couple of our fellow travellers had some garments washed and were happy with the result.||||In short, if you are looking for a spic and span place just to spend the night, the Puesta Del Sol is OK, but you will have a very hard time finding the building's soul. On the Puesta Del Sol's website one can read: "New and thrifty hotel. With homely environment. Owned and managed by a local family committed to bring you truly Costa Rican experience so you can feel and taste the real local culture". Maybe it is high time for Freddy and his charming wife to live up to that statement and to spice their B&B with some real Costa Rican ingredients and flavours, not at least to pump a great part of their natural warmness into the...

Unfortunately, my friend and I had a horrible experience. After finding average sorts of bugs (cockroaches, spiders, beetles) which we can handle, we started to see Bed Bugs within the bed itself, and around the bed frame. These we couldn't handle, because they are incredibly hard to get rid of if you carry one home.||We immediately left the room (around 11pm), and found another hotel to stay at.||When we came back the next day we talked with Juanita. Instead of hearing us out and checking the room for bed bugs, she called us liars. We were shocked. We gave her a chance to look at the pictures we took, and she said it was a cockroach. We compared what a cockroach looks like and a bed bug looks like, and they are very different. She walked away saying there was nothing she could do (we requested the $30 back, and told her it was serious, and she needed to properly treat the room to get rid of them).||We pushed some more and she got her husband to come talk to us. We spoke with him and although he seemed more reasonable at first, he still maintained that we were liars.||Eventually a group of european backpackers showed up that he had set rooms up for, and we told him they should inform their next customers. If even for them to check the room.||He didn't.||We waited until after the guests had settled and told him we'd tell them if he didn't. Instead he said he'd give us our money back, but we needed to go with him to an ATM. We decided not to go into a car with him (we are 2 girls), so we followed him in our rental car.||When he left, he sped so fast we couldn't keep up with him, and we noticed he flew by a legitimate ATM. ||We realized he might be trying to lose us, and may not want us to go back to tell the guests the situation. We decided to go back and tell the next guests, as we had given him his chance to tell them on his own and he'd failed to do so.||We told the guests what had happened to us, and said they might want to check their beds before settling in, as bed bugs are quite serious.||Also a side note: When we said we'd write a bad review on TripAdvisor so people could know their bad business, he said that he was not on TripAdvisor, despite having a sticker on their office door, and a permanent section of their road-side sign saying they were on...

We stayed here for 6 nights over Easter. ||Pros: the view of the sunsets from the top floor is amazing every night. Short walk into town but away from the noise of the main road. Most comfortable bed we've had through South and Central America so far. Daily servicing of your room. Very clean. Juanita cooks a great breakfast (and it was different every morning). There are two gas hobs and some cutlery and crockery you can use in their laundry to prepare food (no fridge though). Good WiFi. ||Cons: overall, we felt like a bit of an inconvenience. I think guests would feel more comfortable at a table in a common area for breakfast instead of at the kitchen counter in the family home. Hot water goes cold every time there's a gust of wind (which is 24/7) so you have to turn off the hot tap and turn it back on every time this happens. This breaks any regular shower into about 5 parts. Freddy was very quick with two repairs we needed in the shower (although this didn't impact the hot water situation). ||To follow others comments, yes Freddy does prefer cash payment, however after telling him our card didn't work into 2 atms in town he let us pay by card. Juanita would not accept card for a tour we wanted to pay for so we paid the tour place directly (on card when...