Having just returned home from a 30 day trip and adventure to Granada, Corn Island, San Juan del Sur, Leon and Montelimar Nicaragua, my wife and I had a wonderful experience of this country and its people. No matter what occurred we would not have wanted to miss any part of it. Our flight from Toronto was booked by me on Air Canada to Miami and then onto Managua by TACA, the flight was smooth and got us in on time. All of our accommodations, local land transfers and flight to Corn Islands between 5 locations were handled by a very professional local Managua/Granada travel outfit, MP Travel Agency. Our last destination for 5 days was the all inclusive Barceló Montelimar Resort on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. The drive from Leon was long and scenic with different landscape throughout, however, once approaching Montelimar and the long tree lined road to the resort, our expectations rose and were not altered for the remaining days. The Barceló Montelimar is a first class hotel, exquisite large tropical gardens with many walkways among the beach bungalows, long stretch of medium dark clean sand beach, a large main pool and sport facilities. Our room in the beach bungalow was large with a king size bed, lots of storage space, TV, AC and a full bathroom with tub. The daily maid service was efficient and prompt. The single one buffet restaurant serving all the 293 room resort was large but did run into overload during lunch on the weekend and had to be closed for a short time. Weekends are the busiest when the people from Managua spend some time here, otherwise during the week; it is a few mixed tourists from around the world and a plane charter from Quebec Canada. None of the areas of the resort were ever crowded, even places could be found for solitude. Safety and security was never in question, staff always around and looking out for the guests. The snack bar served delicious food, beer plentiful and of course all basic rum based drinks, however, after 7 PM there were no bars open in the main hotel area, one would have to hike up to the disco or casino for a drink. This definitely is not conductive of a five star hotel and the literature outlining hotel services, features and costs are way out of date and need to be updated. The Bar Carey states beverages from 10 AM to 10 PM, but was closed much earlier around 6 to 7 PM. The A la Carte restaurant was a nice feature and offered an alterative to the buffet dinner, however again, the service consistency between guest was interesting, some got bread and/or butter, no mention of self serve salad bar was made, had to ask, forgot who ordered what. A little more staff training would help. The staff was helpful, friendly, work very hard and long hours and did their best to understand our limited Spanish.
A wonderful hotel resort complex, maybe not a 5 star but at least a 4 for this ar
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