Casa Lamia Restaurant & Lodge — Restaurant in Quepos

TOTAL SCAM!! please read also other reviews and do not book here!!!!! Just a quick premise: I consider myself ad adaptable person but I could not have stayed at casa lamia if it costed 100€ per night, let alone for 1400€ for 3 nights. The fact is that this IS NOT the chic place that the picture online suggest, and it's way overpriced even compared to other places nearby. Posting neat pictures of beautifull sinks (that btw did not even have hot water) or instagrammable dish does not justify asking for that price!! The structure is simple (metal sheet roof with wooden poles) open directlyt on a pubblic road and they tried their best to make it look nice but it is still a very simple structure (again nothing wrong with that, execpt for the price). There is no outside space except for an amaca/balcony with very unsafe net flooring from wich you can see the inside of the rooms below and that is connected to the common area (people even from oustide the hotel can walk in front of the windows of your room) The bedsheets were clearly already used or, at best, not properly washed. There are no adittional services: no pool, no transfer to/from town (if you dont have a car you need to walk 40 min under the sun and downhill to reach Manuel Antonio),no enclosed parking, no room safe, no back up generator (with daily blackout). Our bed was 5 feet from the restaurant tables and you could litterally hear people chew, the staff, that clearly tries very hard to makes you feel confortable, is absolutely not professionally trained. The music from the restaurant was audible from the bed and you wake up at 6 am with the sound of the kitchen. The food is nicely presented but ordinary, nothing special...they list on their menu a single dish for 2 people for 39000 CRC, almost 80 $, (2 Michelin stars restaurant in Manhattan has cheaper selections!) At our arrival they show us to a room that was not the "Luxury Tent" we reserved. Only after we asked for explanation they told us that, since they were building other tents and during the morning it would have been noisy, they decided to move us to a different type of room that was almost half the price (without telling us before). The owner gave us meals for free, but what if we did not question the room? Last but not least the kitchen cough fire the first morning, it was a minor fire but they didn't even bother asking clients to leave their rooms despite a thick smoke everywhere, after that we did not have water in the rooms, when the water returned we were outside and since the sink drain remain automatically closed and the water was open the room flooded. The overall idea behind this place is that they value nice design over quality, but design alone simply cannot stand. Some of this inconvenients are annoying even for a cheap motel, simply not acceptable for a place of higher category wich casa Lamia simply is not, not in a ANY SINGLE ASPECT, except...

BEWARE: this is a SCAM.

If you’re reading this review, please do NOT book this accommodation. We arrived yesterday and had the worst experience ever, we ended up leaving and staying at another hotel. Reviewing the photos attached will say it all, but I will also share our experience in the hopes that no one ever books this place ever again. We booked the double room/bungalow, and none of the 40 photos on the main booking page are of this room.

When we arrived, we were initially confused where the accommodation was as all we saw was a restaurant. Steven, the host, made us pay him up front and he was running all over the place as he was also a waiter for the restaurant. We arrived around 5pm and he told us our room is not ready yet even though we set check in from 2-3pm.

After about 20 minutes, he led us to our room which is located directly behind the restaurant. THE ROOMS ARE ATTACHED TO THE RESTAURANT, there is NO private entry to the rooms, you will have to lug your suitcases between people dining in order to get to the rooms!

When we entered the room this is what we saw: The bed was not made correctly. They used a mattress cover as a fitted sheet, and there was no cover for the duvet. After close inspection, the sheets were stained and there were BUGS in the bed The fridge was not on, and there was mouldy yogurt in it. The floor was grimy, we did not feel comfortable walking barefoot NO shower towels were given to us until 6pm The shower and toilet are seperate and resemble a prison cell (photos attached) Music is BLASTING from the restaurant and can be heard. Again, the room was about five feet from the nearest table. The balcony is not actually a balcony, it is an unsafe net with giant iguanas on them The balcony is also accessible from the restaurant, so technically anyone can walk on there and look into our room A few minor things: curtains don’t close all the way, no trash bin, the door to the bathroom doesn’t close (we had to fix this), no safe, front door doesn’t have a handle.

I also want to state that a lot of the reviews are for the restaurant, and NOT for the accommodation which is why they have good ratings.

We raised all of these concerns to Steven and requested a full refund immediately as we had absolutely zero intention on staying here. He called his manager who was in Spain, and she refused to refund us. We asked to speak to the manager and we were told that she can’t be on the phone right now and doesn’t want to speak to us. We had no other choice but to go to another hotel (luckily we were able to find something during high season extremely last minute).

Overall, this place is not what it is depicted on the website. For the price, you will be extremely disappointed and we hope this review defers others from staying here and sharing a similar...

Don’t come here for any amount, and this is why:

I write this from my personal experience with additional input from my family of 5. This place was a disaster from the moment we arrived. Firstly we placed an order for 3 separate tent rooms. When we arrived, we received 2 regular rooms adjacent to the restaurant and 1 tent room, which the owner insisted was an upgrade. There was noisy construction noted at the front and back of the hotel throughout the day. When I entered the room, I noticed that the wall by the restaurant was incredibly thin, and I could hear all the restaurant conversations in my room. I decided to take a shower after a long and humid day, and the water stopped running after about 30 seconds of showering. As I settled in my room I saw that many of the things in the hotel were cheaply made. For example, the faucet handle fell off, the curtains did not fully cover the windows, and the sheets were polyester. While there was WiFi, my phone worked better on cellular data. They had a TV in my room that was connected to Netflix, however the Netflix did not load despite multiple attempts. After returning from dinner, noise from the restaurant did not die down until about 11pm. The following day I decided to take a shower before the day trip we had planned, however there was no running water. I proceeded to complain to the owner, and admittedly I became upset. She proceeded to tell me that the water in the whole city shuts off for 30 minutes every morning. I requested a bucket of water so I could do the basics (i.e. brush my teeth and wash my face), which I received. A few minutes after sitting down for breakfast, she briefly had a conversation with someone in a car, and came over to our table to tell us that “we’re fixing the water problem.” A few moments later she informed us that the water was on. There continued to be significant issues with the shower throughout our stay. For the remainder of our stay, I did my best to enjoy the town and the many activities available, and avoid the owner all together. I think what made the whole ordeal worse was the lack of accountability; every issue that we brought forward was made out to be minor. In the end I felt unheard and ultimately deceived...