Hotel Río Tempisque — Hotel in Nicoya

Despite the description, this isn't a luxury hotel or resort. For that, you would need to book a hotel that's over $120 / night in this area. This is a hotel that offers bigger rooms with basic accommodations (with a few amenities) in a large, park-like setting. I found it to be comparable in value to other similar budget and mid-range hotels in the area. I paid about $54 / night in the off season of mid-July for a room with 2 beds, a fridge microwave, and coffee maker, and A/C. This was the cheapest room here, I believe. The others are larger and located in separate duplex buildings. How much you enjoy it here really depends on your priorities. Bearing this in mind, here are my thoughts.||||PROs:||I stayed in a room with 2 beds, #23. The room was large and the A/C and fridge worked well. There was a microwave, but we did not use it. There was a small round table and chairs. The bathroom sink counter was long with a large mirror and located just outside the bathroom. These rooms are smaller in comparison with the cabin/duplex type rooms in other locations., yet I found the size more than adequate. ||||The room was clean, and the maid service was good. We were very careful with our food and drink, so as not to attract any pests, since that is a risk any time a room has a fridge and/or microwave. I only saw a few ants near the ceiling of the vanity area, but not on the table or dresser near the fridge and microwave. ||||There was a flatscreen TV and good reception, though I think all the channels were in Spanish. There might have been one English movie channel. I really didn't hear any neighboring guests, so it was fairly quiet here. ||||I liked the lush, park-like grounds. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to walk to the back of the grounds where the gazebo and farm animals were. You really have to do that early in the morning because it's so gosh darned hot in Nicoya! The restaurant and pool area were lit at night, and the shallow pool and small hot tub were very popular with a few groups of guests. There was a playground for kiddos. There's a karaoke bar/restaurant across the street. ||||The desk reception warmed up to us after we started a conversation with them (the staff do not speak English). After that, they helped us with taxis, bus schedules, and recommendations of things to do in the area. ||||CONs:||Two of the three days we stayed there, we did not have hot water. It is hot in Nicoya, but I still do not like taking cold showers. There were only two small, rough bath towels. A small hand towel was also provided, but no towel for the floor. When we asked the maid for more towels the next day, she swapped the old towels (which we had hung up to dry and planned to use again) for two new towels, so apparently, two small towels is the allotment for each room. ||||The maids are a bit loud early in the mornings and there is no sign on the door to indicate that service is not needed, so they clean every day unless you are there to open the door and tell them (in Spanish) that it's not necessary. They replace both bars of soap even though they were only opened the day before. I'm not sure I understand that.||||The beds weren't particularly comfortable and the linen was rough and thin. ||||The room description mentions a terrace, but all we had was the sidewalk in front of the rooms and no furniture. (I think the bigger rooms have a terrace and rocking chairs)||||The hotel is secluded and you must take a taxi into town ($4) to eat, or stay and pay more to eat at the hotel. There is a restaurant across the street, but it isn't open for breakfast, and its prices are similar, anyway. No breakfast is included with your stay. We did end up eating breakfasts and one lunch from the restaurant and the food was decent - the breakfast items were better than the other items - but overpriced, of course. The service was incredibly slow and there were only a few other people there at the time. The restaurant is an open-air building, so it was very hot. There's no A/C anywhere on-site except the rooms and the small reception office. ||||There was NO Wi-Fi anywhere except the on-site restaurant. The outdoor, hot restaurant.||||The pool area can be loud at times, and the karaoke bar across the street is open and poppin' until about midnight.||||There were a few biting mosquitos outside at night, but as far as I could tell, not in the room.||||Hope that helps you decide....

When I read reviews of people saying this is a good option for a one night stay I think “Oh, ok I will not expect a 3-4 star hotel but at least it will have a good bed with a decent mattress, a decent pillow, WiFi so I can catch up with the world and even thought in Nicoya is hot,take a hot shower if I feel like it”. Well THIS IS NOT THE CASE!!||It is important to mention for the objectivity of the review that I’ve stayed at this hotel over 3 times, not more than one night at a time. The hotel has 3 different room sections, one that’s near the reception where rooms are bigger, have a fridge and some a microwave and then 2 other sections where rooms are much more smaller and not worth the price I was charged.||I decided to write this review because the recent experience that I had was so poor that I will no longer will be staying at this hotel for the night, and wanted people to know because oI read too many “Good for spending the night” reviews and from my opinion for the rate this hotel has they need to step things up! ||First the good stuff, the food at the restaurant is pretty good price wise and quality, also the service is great we had Rocio which was great with kids and always worried about our table.||The bad stuff, as I mentioned above the rooms we stayed at which are located behind the reception are small and not cozy at all. Very old loud AC, we had to switch rooms once because in the first room the AC was so loud I was not going to be able to sleep, the second room had a similar AC, loud but somewhat better than the first. The mattress was old and hard and the pillows were sturdy, old and hard as a rock! Rooms do not have a phone to call reception so I decided to use my personal phone to locally call reception and see if they could change the pillows or at least provide me with a new set so my boyfriend and I could use them one on top of the other try to make them a little bit taller. They let me know all the pillows they have in the hotel are the same but they could probably send me a couple more, but he needed at least 20 minutes in order to do so. If you are still reading this your guess is correct, pillows never arrived nor I received a call apologizing or whatever. WiFi reception is not available at this side of the hotel, hot water is not available either.||So there you go $57-60 a night to “sleep” in what you might be able to call a bed. I’d say try to look for another hotel as I will, cause this one is not worth it until they change some...

This is not a 4 star hotel, but I rated it with 4 because it was exactly what my son and I needed for one night. We flew into Liberia airport late in the day and did not want to do the 3.5 hour drive to Tambor on the southern coast of the peninsula in the dark so we made the 1 hour drive from the airport to the Rio Tempisque and spent the night before leaving early in the morning. The hotel is easy to find as it is directly on the highway in Nicoya so we did not have to go out of our way at all, and they have a restaurant so we did not have to leave the hotel to have dinner. The rooms are clean and larger than a standard hotel room, the AC works very well, and the shower had great pressure and hot water. The only downsides were the very firm mattresses and the fact the restaurant doesn't open in the morning until 7:30 so we ate on the road after leaving earlier than that. Also nice to awake to a loud howler monkey in the area as we were packing up to leave. Overall this hotel is perfect if you need a one night stay on the wat to or from the airport &...