Rooms:
The room was very large, decorated with taste and very clean. A long corridor brings you to your first floor rooms, your door facing the jungle, you can ear animal noises.
Restaurants:
we started off with two restaurants but in the last week they opened the third one: The lighhouse. The buffets are thematic most of the time and the food although of limited variety is very well prepared. This place has great chefs and balanced meals : we could have beef, chicken, sea food, fish and a wide variety of vegetables, fantastic soups all the time. The À la carte menu at the Plantation Restaurant is different from the one at the Pelican Grill down near the pools. But it is just as good. At the Pelican Grill, they have pizza and grilled cheese À la carte. The service isn’t very good : waiters are slow or don’t understand English so we got a Spanish Dictionary. The lighthouse meal was surely the best we have ever had in all all inclusives experiences: we just sat and they brought us fantastic food including fish, smoked salmon, etc for dessert… divine creme brule.
Beach: if you intend to have an ashtonishing beach, don’t go there. The Pacific is a wild sea although there are no waves in front of the resort, the water is rather grey and you can’t see your hands once they are in the water. On the first week we had normal tides, but on the second week, we woke up one morning to an amazing natural phenomenon the beach had disappeared to make place to a moonlike vision full of rocks. This low tide lasted 6 hours and a half for a whole week. So at one point we could only swim around 4:30 in the afternoon. Panameans come at low tide to pick up oysters which they sell. The beach is 2 kilometers wide so a good place to jog. There is nothing else than the resort on this beach. On your left side, you can walk and climb to have a better view of the sea and pelicans. The resort provides solo and duo kayaks for free. Overall sea swimming is disappointing, plus you have to watch out for sting rays. Bring your sea shoes. On the second week, a BIG PROBLEM came up for most of the people that had been there for the 2 weeks: insects. Insects in our beds. We met at least 20 people that were badly bitten at night by insects, maybe bed fleas, maybe sea fleas,,, whatever, nobody seemed to know what they were. We had trouble sleeping because we were constantly bitten by these invisible bugs during the night. We complained to the hotel once, twice,three times, 4 times , five times and finally they came around 10 o’clock one night to change everything in our bedroom. My companion was so bitten on his legs that body people were pointing at him on the beach. The linen change did nothing much for our case. We used Deep Wood Off, calamine, alcohol, nothing stopped the itch. Two weeks after my return I still have traces of bug bites on my arms and legs.
During our stay. 190 guests were invited by CBS television to watch the Super Bowl. The atmosphere changed from a quiet placeto a lively place. During all our stay a number of conventions came through. I am not sure if this resort is really intended for vacationers or conventioners cause there are wonderful convention rooms in the resort, but with the kind of beach offered, the swimming pools.
Tours and Visits: Nolitour offers tours but you might as well shop for better prices at the Gamboa Tours located in the hotel. You can get some of the same tours for half the price. A geat thing to do in Panama is shop. We took the local bus 3 times just outside the resort gates. You have to signal the bus to stop, jump in and it brings to the Albrook Shoping Center directly since it is located next to the bus terminal. You just give 30cents to the driver when you get off. Coming back find the bus going to Vera Cruz and get off at the hotel about 5 minutes befire Vera Cruz which is said to be a dangereous city… so don’t miss your stop. Shopping: you’ll go crazy for cheap shows, clothes and just anything.
We would go back there if we knew the bug problem had been resolved. But this hotel will probably cater to very rich people in the future.