Villa Escondida — Hotel in Oaxaca

I have been travelling the world for the last year and have never encountered such a horrible experience. Myself and my boyfriend booked to stay here for four nights, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to change our booking to only one night on the day that we arrived at Villa Escondida. The young girl working the front is quite lovely and efficient and after speaking with her about making changes to my booking, she had come back from speaking to the owner and asked if I could please pay for two nights accommodation because of the time the notice was given. I had responded and asked if I could just pay for one night, plus 50% of the next night, and I waited for her to return with the answer from her boss. Before I knew it, the owner of Villa Escondida was standing in front of me yelling all sorts of things about the booking and timing in Spanish to me, yes I can understand basic Spanish, but she knew this and was doing this to intimidate me to pay up the two nights accommodation. I went to my room quickly and returned with my boyfriend, to try and calm her down and sort out the matter. Just as quickly she had started yelling at him also. Due to the circumstances we had to leave, but at this point I was not going to pay someone so rude for two nights accommodation, who was not even able to speak calmly about the situation or try and reason with us in a formal manner. We could not speak to this woman, who only spoke to us in Spanish, and now I know from other reviews that she can actually speak English also. At this point she yelled at my boyfriend and told him to pay up now and leave immediately. So we grabbed our things and walked towards the gate to leave...and whilst we were doing so, another man who worked here chased us down to the gate and locked it with his back to the door, refusing for us to leave until we payed for the two nights. My boyfriend had asked the man to please move out of the way, we were leaving and were not paying after being spoken to this way. The man then pushed my boyfriend back and he called for the owner to come down to the gate. After standing there for ten minutes with this woman yelling at us continually, as she wreaked of alcohol and cigarettes and demanding the money, the other man was trying to tell us he was the police and would call in other policeman to take care of this for us, which just completely blew our minds how out of control this situation had gotten. We told her as best that we could, that we could not understand what she was saying, but we would only be paying for the one night (at this point I just wanted to see the end of all this), she then responded to us in Spanish, calling us "uneducated", "disrespectful", "heroine addicted", "party addicted", "stupid" Australians. We paid up the pesos and walked out the gate. ||Never have I ever had an experience like this from anyone I have encountered on my year of travelling. This woman was unkind and insulted us in ways I never thought possible! I wouldn't recommend this accommodation to my worst enemy, no one deserves to be treated like this, we are humans with basic rights and this family is just money hungry...

I had the pleasure of staying here for 6 months.We were originally planning on only staying 3 months and leaving to see other parts of Oaxaca coast line. But Villa Escondida tropical paradise was to perfect for us.The owner Giuliana was a very gracious host, help us out when ever we need it a very kind lady.The staff[ Daniel ,Sylvia,all the maids] welcome us and were here for us for every day needs with a friendly smile. The place is in a perfect location set up on a hill top away from every day tourist on the beach.But still only a 5 minute walk to beach and less than 10 minutes walk to center of town.No need for car or taxi here ,the nearest grocery is 1 minute walk. .We stayed in 4 different bungalows and they were all unique .When picking either rooms or a bungalow make sure you figure whats important for you because they are all different .They have a lot of mix variety living space to choose from..Just email them directly .And yes they do have roosters ,so do bring ear plugs if it might be a problem.We just closed all windows before bedtime and the hum of the fan blocked out the Mexico alarm...

Stayed one night out of the two we had booked. The first evening we returned to find a rat scurrying around the room, which had vanished by the time we fetched a staff member. He shrugged and said they couldn't do anything tonight, so we had a sleepless night, which wasn't helped by finding a scorpion in the room later on. Another guest here had a similar experience, saying the rat had chewed a hole in his backpack, so this isn't an isolated incident.

We spoke to the receptionist the next morning who allowed us to check out a day early, but could only offer less than 1/3 of our money back for that day. This wasn't her fault, and she was extremely helpful and polite throughout.

All-in-all, this is a beautiful property with mostly excellent staff, but the pest problem is unacceptable, and the owners don't seem to care much.

(Sidenote, it's fine to have dogs on the premises, but they bark incessantly throughout the night. Probably chasing...