Hotel Cristina — Hotel in Bocas del Toro

I'm from the USA so I've stayed in all kinds of hotels in North America from Motel 6 & 8 to The Hilton. I've been living in Central America for 4 months. I was very happy to find this hotel and found the price of $30-40/night very reasonable. I was/am so tired of hostels! ||||My room was clean, the bed was a USA-style bed (ie, "real") and the bed & bath linens were clean, the A/C worked well and cooled the room to "cold" in under 2 hours in the evening. I had a private bathroom in my room. Finally! I also had a TV in my room that had The Discovery Channel in English with Spanish subtitles. Nice! The staff were very polite to me. There was a wardrobe/armoir where I could air out my clothes, a chair, and a desk. No alarm clock. I had to unplug the TV to plug in my cell phone charger. ||||While I was there, my bathroom did not have hot water as advertised and the TV's speakers were blown so I got a lot of static when the Discovery Channel had background music. However, it was so dang hot and so fun that I didn't mind the cold water or that speakers were blown. ||||Speaking of music, the village square has GREAT live, loud music from 10pm to 2am--at least on the weekends. But you can hear it from the hotel. If you're not planning to party till 2am and have issues sleeping through loud noise (like me) then I'd find a hotel that is much father away from the plaza. Otherwise, the hotel itself is quiet. But there's a grocery store across the street and a breakfast restaurant nextdoor and they get a lot of traffic early in the mornings. But in my experience, sleeping-in in Central America is impossible for Gringos. ||||By the way, there is a GREAT restaurant across the street that is owned by French Canadians. It's the BEST food I've had since I got to Central America. The prices were way cheaper than what I'd pay in the USA or Costa Rica for the SAME food and service. My server was a black/Caribbean, so he spoke English and Spanish. Me gusta. The owners are...

We were part of a tour group (standard level) with G Adventures. The room was clean. Our air conditioner did not work well but other tour members had excellent a/c in their rooms. We had hot water. The maids seemed to clean what they had time for. We were there over New Year's Eve, so the place was packed full. No mad service on one day, I guess they ran out of time before their shift was over. Wifi quality was varied, depending on how many people were on it, I think. Our room was at the end of the hall, far from the router, so service in the room was sketchy. The lobby had better wifi. The biggest problem we had was the restaurant next door. On two of the three nights they played very loud music with a bad DJ until 3:00am. The other night was fine. The location couldn't be better. This hotel is smack in the middle of Main Street with a grocery store on the first floor and...

While I have traveled some in the past, Cambodia, China, Singapore, Honduras, Mexico I have not had such poor Conditions. While it appears white and clean in the lobby we had things towels with holes, noisy casino in lobby that although were supposed to close at 10:00 had people All night long. Unable to sleep after being woken up by the noise I sat outside keeping track of them. One had a key and came and went with women until the writing of this at 5:52 a. m.! No knobs on night stand, no chair or reading lamp, very bare. Beds hard as a rock. On the plus side we did have air and hot water. Look into Boca reef hotel one block away for...