Hotel Laguna del Cocodrilo — Hotel in Tamarindo

Please do not make the same mistake that me and my wife did when we stayed at this hotel! We looked at two different rooms in this hotel and finally settled on the larger room with a small balcony directly above the registration desk.

It looked fine on the surface, but as soon as we looked at things closer, it was clear that the room was hardly ever cleaned. The sheets had dozens of black hairs along with multiple "mystery" stains. We found a large splotch of mold on the wall behind the bed and huge cob webs in the legs of the nightstand and other furniture.

We asked the woman at the front desk for a refund and she refused -- apparently she is the owner and is from France originally. She was very rude and didn't seem to think that an unclean room was that big of a deal.

Luckily, we had both brought compact sleeping bags and so we were able to sleep on top of those instead of in the nasty, uncleaned sheets she provided us. She also lied to us about construction being done at the hotel and said that they wouldn't start before 8:30am. This was a lie because we were both woken up by construction at 6:30am.

After telling the woman that we were dissatisfied with the room, she came up so that we could point out everything that was gross and disgusting about it. The best part about the entire exchange was when she said "it's not that dirty"...like, isn't that kind of an admission that it's at least somewhat dirty? In hindsight, we should have walked away from this place to begin with but we were tired and desperate.

After touring a few other hotels, we told one of them (Hotel Amarillo, I think) that we were staying at Cocodrilo and the guy replied "well our hotel is probably cleaner" -- he said this totally unprompted which solidified in my mind that this was a consistent issue with the Cocodrilo and not just some fluke occurrence.

In conclusion, I feel ripped off by this place, I wish I had my $100 back, and hope this post will keep others from having the same crappy experience we did. Pretty much anywhere is better than this smelly, dirty, moldy, cob web infested place. They didn't even have a...

We arrived at Laguna del Cocodrilo to an empty reception desk. After five minutes of waiting and ringing the bell, a flustered and angry woman, Sandy, who was the owner came out and checked us in. She informed us that there would be a party in the hotel that evening and to expect disturbances. She apologised, saying that she wasn't aware that the party was taking place, and that if we made a complaint, we would be reimbursed (which never happened as she quickly changed her mind, saying that she never promised anything). She also mentioned that there was a safe in the room and that her cleaning staff were not to be trusted. Don’t be fooled by the safe as we had $30 taken.||We were shown to our room on the first floor and were in shock. I would have walked out and booked another hotel, but we had already paid. The photos on the website are deceiving. Our room needed a complete revamp and a thorough deep clean. Bed sheets and towels need to be either cut up and used as cleaning materials to clean the room or thrown out. Sandy must have had the sheets for the last 20 years as you could see they were completely worn out. The towels were a faded blue, barely fit around the body and had holes. The fridge was not clean and should have be thrown out too. Floor not cleaned and room very dusty. There was a leaking pipe around the toilet, especially after flushing. The shower head was dirty and needed to be replaced. We initially had no water as the taps hadn’t been turned on by the cleaners (who Sandy blamed for everything that was wrong). You could also see all of the piping under the sink and around the toilet. There were no fire exits and the one electrical socket we had was hanging out of the wall. Going upstairs to the room in the evenings was unsafe as the lighting was intermittent and it was quite scary.||We won’t be returning and I wouldn't refer to this accommodation as a hotel - but an overpriced hostel. It’s nice to be nice when you want someone's money, but when you are in the wrong, you should admit it. We tried to communicate with Sandy but received...

WARNING: DO NOT EVER GO TO THIS HOTEL/LANDLADY IS STEALING||||We have been here for a couple nights and when we arrived we wondered why this hotel was that cheap because although the rooms were poorly cleaned and everything was old and mold we still thought we would have made a good deal. ||(The hotel is very near to the beach)||||We have been on a wedding at the last night of our stay and a shuttle picked us up so the hotel-owner knew that we will be away for a while. The next day we woke up and packed our stuff to leave. When I took my things (Passport, Watch, Wallet and other personal items) out of the safe, I counted the money in my wallet and noticed that there was money missing. 500€ where gone.||||We talked to our neighbours to ask if they saw anybody coming in or out of our room and told him about the incident. He replied that he was missing a couple hundred Canadian dollars from his safe, immediately investigating as well. ||||I then tried to talked to the Lady at the reception (small room in the hotel complex) which apparently owns this place, and she told me that it would be impossible because she would be the only one who has the keys.||She didn't even tried to understand my situation and just said that what I'm telling wouldn't be possible.||||The safe is only lockable by key not by entering a passcode. So everybody that has a copy of the key would have been able to open it as well.||||Afterwards we packed our stuff and went to another hotel (this was already planned before the incident) The Diría Hotel a very beautiful and nice resort. ||Here we told the Head of Security about this and he immediately helped us out. Andy saved our trip here!||He took care of the communication with the local police who came to the hotel and wrote a report for the incident and started the investigation. We just hope this will help people and stop this Woman from robbing other tourists as well!||||Thanks for taking your time and reading this.||Don't make the same mistake we did.||You won't save any money...