Hotel Mama Ines — Hotel in Hicaco

There were both positives and negatives:|Positives:|1) The location is great, offering direct access to the beach and a fine view of the ocean|2) We ate a couple of times at the restaurant and found the food to be really quite good and reasonably priced|3) The staff were friendly and helpful|4) The bed was comfortable and, when it worked, the wifi was adequate for normal usage|Negatives:|1) The room was dirty and had cock roaches in the shower.|2) We had only two towels for two people for three days and no hand towels, beach towels or glasses.|3) When we asked the staff for more of the above they responded quickly including fumigating the room. However, they indicated that these were not normal requests. So, be prepared to ask for everything other than the bare essentials|4) We came primarily to take a coiba tour. We asked the manager for a recommendation, which he gave us (Ocean Blue Tours). He assured us that the guides spoke English. WE noticed that he ?/hotel took a 'deposit' from us which was subtracted from the charge from the tour guide but thought that he would have a vested interest in giving a good recommendation. To use an American idiom, the tour was a giant rip off. No English was spoken , I could not snorkel at all because the equipment was so bad, no effort was made by the guides to explain any of the area in any language, we could not go on a hike into the island or visit a bay with a concentration of turtles, lunch was comprised of some cold pasta with canned tuna thrown in. |In summary, do not go with Ocean Blue and do not trust the manager to give an unbiased recommendation. As to the hotel, while the location was nice, we...

This hotel has so much potential - the location right on the beach is lovely, the design with many levels to enjoy is great and the people are very nice. We found the food at the restaurant to be delicious and the service just fine. The hotel really really needs some TLC - our room was dirty and needed painting, the mirrors were cracked, we had 2 old towels only (for 3 nights) and unfortunately had cock roaches. I believe this was because the room backs on to where they store the beverages - so move the beverages and/or make sure the room is properly cleaned AND sprayed for roaches before guests move in. We counted on a recommendation from the hotel for a trip to Coiba (as advertised on their website) which was our sole reason for being in Santa Catalina, and were directed by Julio (to whom we paid a $20 "deposit" - should have been our first clue)to Oceans Blue who they apparently always use without any complaints. It was hands down the worst "tour" if you can call it that we have ever taken. Disinterested, unengaged "guides", ancient, broken equipment, no direction or information - utter chaos and I actually question the safety of the operation. This hotel definitely needs to do some work to be fair value for money. Really too bad as I said, it has great potential but at this point, I would not...

Calm and cool place to stay. You can rent surf boards and directly have the beach in front of the hotel to surf. You have a nice terrace with a nice view to see the sunset. Also you have a restaurant with good food and drinks to have dinner during the sunset. Draw-back is that it is really at the end of the town and about a 20 minutes walk to central town / bus station. So you really rely somehow to eat at the hotel's restaurant. And to catch the bus you also rely on the will of the owner to drive you in the early mornings to the bus station, which was unfortunately not the case for us with our big backpacks... Rooms are somewhat basic and unfortunately also very humide with a lot of mold on the walls. On one hand the location is a plus, but also on the other hand a disadvantage. Decide by yourself. In my opinion it is a bit too...