Stank, noise and terrible food

20 november 2019 - Guápiles, Costa Rica

"This resort is like a theme park. You're not allowed to walk the concrete paths through the resort yourself. Whereever you go on this terrain, company of a tour guide is mandatory. Although it all seems completely safe here. There are group tours in the night and in the morning. A private tour is also possible, but it costs $30. There are also other activities, such as ziplining, also not included in the price.
We checked in a bit too early, so we were asked to have some coffee in the restaurant while waiting for our room to be cleaned. The coffee was fine, the bananacake we also had was not very good, far too dry, it must have been lying there for some time. When our room was ready, we went there to bring our luggage and we got instructions to wait for a tour guide. He would come to us in about two hours, to tell us the time that the night tour would be. The room, however, stank of gasoline. So bad, we got a headache after just 10 minutes in there. It was like walking in to a gasstation. It was floor wax. But we didn't want to stay inside in this smell. So we waited outside, then decided to go and have some lunch. Perhaps the stank would be gone in time. 
The lunch was too expensive for the quality we got. Deepfreeze veggies from the microwave, watery mashed potatoe and tasteless fish. None of it could have been fresh. Totally not worth the $30. We made a complaint and didn't have to pay for the food.
The room still smelled terrible, and the tour guide was still nowhere to be seen, so we started to wander around, despite the warnings we weren't aloud to go by ourselfs. In the end, the tour guide found us, he turned out to be walking somewhere on the terrain too. After we agreed upon a time with him, we went back to the room. Still that gasoline smell. So we went somewhere else, off the terrain, to give it some time. When we got back, hours later, the smell was still there. We didn't want to sleep in that smell, so we asked for another room. It turned out to smell the same, but the cleaning lady was asked to wash the floor with another product. That helped a bit, so we moved our luggage to this new the room. The cleaning lady, though, was clearly pissed about it, she even turned her back to us so we couldn't thank her for the trouble. 
We decided we wouldn't eat at the restaurant again and went to sleep early that night. 
Although this resort is located at the edge of a national park, we heard trucks soaring by on the highway closeby.
At breakfast, the milk that was served with the cereals was warm. 
Maybe some people like an amusement park like this. Not us. We like an adventure, explore the jungle on foot, by ourselves, and don't want to be treated like children. Further on, we hoped to find a good meal and a nice sleep here. But this one night here wasn't worth the $112 dollars at all, and I would not recommend booking here."

Wegbuizerd (roadside hawk) langs de kant van de weg

Foto’s