It is marketed – or perhaps reviewed – as one of the more ‘up-scale’ establishments in Puerto Viejo. In reality, it is little more than a guest house.
In a relatively-manicured and safe area of Puerto Viejo, Hotel Formentera Playa is one of the hotels marketed towards tourists who ostensibly like their creature comforts with easy access to the sea. The entrance is cute and calm and maintained – a welcome change to the wild path leading there. The owner, a Spaniard, is on hand to indulge most of your requests and give you advice. Our arrival, however, necessitated a one-hour wait as no-one was about: an abject fail of a welcome for the die-hard travellers such as we had been for the past few days.
We were given the keys to our room – a double room with an en-suite shower. True to its description, it was all there. Yet the circumstances in which it were maintained were so apalling the WHO, should they send a representative, would cringe. The beds are well-used and sparsely covered. One of the few ‘blankets’ s so tattered and dirty, that you wonder why maybe $5 of your $100 a night rate (once the $10 breakfast has been included) hasn’t gone towards either a new purchase or…..laundry. (The steady stream of guests indicates this gig is a nice cash cow for the owner.) Remember that Costa Rica is a cheap country – you can survive off of coconut water for $0 simply by pulling it off a tree.
The room is meager in furnishings and generally exudes an atmosphere of that of a downbeat hostel…..you are here for X nights, and then the conveyor-belt system kicks in. The bathroom, although replete, after a two-day stay will start to smell. Large rocks are placed at the top of the drains and we wonder if it isn’t to keep out the creepy-crawlies……We swat away flies/mosquitoes/unidentified animals continuously – a habit we retain in London it has become so tortuous.
The morning breakfast is the delight of this place. Scrambled eggs, salsa and good coffee. Yet the value of this ($10) pales as the salsa is rationed and, given the outright extortionate price (we later booked a $60 5 star hotel in San Jose with oh-so comfortable beds and clean showers) of the rooms exclusive of breakfast, remind you that you are, indeed, in a tourist trap.
We had another 7 nights booked on the Caribbean coast yet it was sitting at this ‘hotel’, on a rainy tropical day, that we decided that ANYWHERE but HERE would do. We searched for flights to the actual Bahamas, to South America – everywhere. The next day we moved to different lodgings but (could you imagine?) these were even worse – so bad, in fact, that we went to town and bought a same-day 5 hour bus ticket to San Jose.
AVOID is the word we would use for Puerto Viejo – avoid it all, and certainly the ‘hotels’ in and around the town.
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