My GF and I stayed here in late April 2008, again I won't repeat what others have said, they are all true. This is a great place to relax if that is what your looking for. It has the feel of a small intimate resort where you get to know everyone. It is not 5 star quality but they are renovating slowly with what little they have and the new renovations look awesome (they do renovations every fall).

Tips:

Take the taxi to Havana, its $90CUC for up to 4 people and it a way better value than the package tour ($51CUC per person)

Bring gifts for EVERYONE, the security guards (6 watching the resort) get forgotten alot and get paid very little.

Book the ALA Carte, they really try hard and you have 2 servers and a personal chef for around 5-6 tables max. We really enjoyed it. Its a 4 course meal.

Book a massage, $10CUC for 30 min, $25CUC for Full Hour. He is a registered massage therapist, this is almost a steal. He is amazing according to my GF.

Treat everyone with respect and you will get it back ten-fold.
The bartenders and animation staff work 17 hour days, one day on one day off, but they usually end up working 4-5 days straight. I have never seen harder working people at any resort that still care at Midnight the same as they cared at 10am. They have to show up early to make sure the pool area is clean and clean it up after the bar closes.

All in all, if you dont go in with an attitude you will have a great relaxing vacation.

Stayed for 5 nights late April 2008. Resort experience mirrored the many reviews here. Very good value, would go back tomorrow. One major complaint: impossible to escape the music thumping until 0130 every morning (and the same bad songs every night). Take earplugs.

Rooms: clean, functional. A/C, minifridge. Note that you should not keep any open food or beverage containers in the room (even if emptied), as the many tiny ants will find it.

Beds: king-sized, hard mattress with springs palpable.

Food: functional. Breakfast omlette was good, especially after adding bacon and cheese (not at omlette station). Fresh OJ was excellent, but disappeared after Day 3. Lunch and dinner was variable, could usually find something palatable. Would recommend showing up early for meals, not everything was replaced. As well, at the cook station ask for fresh-cooked items, as the pre-cooked fish or pork was typically way overdone and dry. No GI issues encountered, and I did eat fresh vegs.

Drinks: weak, variable quality. Recommend bringing your own (large-ish) travelmug, to cut down on trips to the bar. Some bartenders made tastier drinks than others. Spanish coffee (highlighted in many of the photos) was uniformly excellent (and strong). Coffee was in general very good (some variability). Beer was refreshing if weak. As a test, banged back 4 glasses in about 10 minutes to no/zero/zip effect. No swim-up bar (I consider this a good thing, for one obvious reason).

Beach: very good. Excellent snorkelling just off the beach (saw a puffer fish less than 8 feet from shore)! Reef goes on forever. Please remember not to touch the coral, it is very very fragile and I would like it to still be there when I go back. Provided equipment is passable, if you don't know how to snorkel just ask at the dive shop. No jellies when we were there.

Activities: okay, but are not really my thing. Walk up the hill was good, with short visit to small farm. Amazing small banasas served up, better than any other I have ever tasted. Havana excursion was just okay, would instead recommend renting a taxi and seeing the city that way. Guide has a script he has to follow.

Resort grounds: large, clean, colourful. Keep an eye out for smallish holes in the grass near the pool, they hold land crabs (how cool is that?)! Decent if uninspired pool area.

Staff: excellent. Well, front desk was not always perfect.

Safety: no issues. Small lock-box in room if you want for passport etc.

This resort is the cheaper of the two in Jibacoa...the more expensive being the Superclub Breezes. It has some advantages over the Breezes though - the grounds are more spacious, nicer gardens and each block of rooms is on ground level with a small patio out front.
We went for the week of March 20-27th and found the weather beautiful at that time - the first few days were warm and calm, but the last few days were quite windy and cooler. There are quite a few things to do at Jibacoa:
1) Snorkeling. The reefs just a few hundred feet off the beach are very beautiful with a large range of different corals and fish, and some invertebrates like sea urchins, lobsters etc. The reef is in better shape than most I have seen in places like Mexico. However, I think their days are numbered because many resort guests are ignorant of how fragile the reef is. If you go snorkeling here PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NEVER NEVER TOUCH THE CORAL, DO NOT STAND UP/WALK AMONGST THE CORAL. You should always swim above the coral and avoid touching anything at all costs. Even if you can't see anything under you, by standing up on the reef you are almost always destroying something. Reefs like this take a beating from tourists and the corals die, even if they are not broken.
2) Beach. The beach is quite wide and very pretty with lots of trees and thatch umbrellas. You can walk a long way in both directions, although once you are out of the resort areas, the large amount of garbage washed up on the beach becomes evident (the resort staff regularly clean up the beach in front). It has quite a natural feel -- more so than the Breezes portion of the beach.
3) Walking or hiking. The staff hired to facilitate activities run hikes and walks three times a week up the mountain behind the resorts and down through farms. This is very nice and well worth it as the guide provides lots of information. The staff at the resort are REALLY kind and sincere people regardless of whether or not guests tip.
4) Day trips - you can do guided excursions to Havana (very recommended!!), Varadero (not sure why we did this....did I go to Cuba to see other tourists?), as well as a river tour, catamaran etc. These are a little expensive but again the guides on these trips put a lot of effort into giving you lots of information about Cuban life, history, politics and the area that you are visiting. They take their jobs seriously and we really appreciated them.

The resort itself is not super polished, but it is very clean, pleasant and the staff are REALLY EXCELLENT. There is a local Cuban music band who are wonderful and perform most nights sometimes with the dance troupe. The dancers are...well, lets just say, its difficult to take your eyes off them!!!! And how do they move like that???

Probably our least favourite aspect was the food at the buffet. Breakfasts were very good (excellent bacon, omellettes). We found that lunch and dinner were ok, but the food is generally rather bland. Probably 100 kilograms of garlic per day in the buffet would have helped.....Its not clear to me whether this is catering to the clientelle (often unadventurous Canadians) or whether this is simply because they don't tend to cook with a lot of spices. In any case, usually we could find something that was really quite nice at each meal....

All in all, I think the best aspects of our trip was seeing the music/dancing that seems to be a core part of Cuban culture, the extremely friendly Cubans, the beach/snorkeling...and seeing how some people in the world manage to get by without all of the 'stuff' we end up thinking we need in 'capitalist' society. Sure they would like it....but seeing a place where many people don't have it makes you realize that its really not necessary to have 100 pairs of shoes, and to buy new fuzzy-logic toe-nail clippers every year from Walmart. I'm not saying that the Communist regime is optimal (Fidel and Raul and co could start by spreading around some of the tourist dollars they are getting).....its just that going to Cuba highlights how much of our society isn't optimal either in other ways.

Enough - go there! Be respectful of the wonderful Cubans and their wonderful reefs.

My partner and I just returned from a very enjoyable and relaxing one week stay at Cameleon Villas Jibacoa. I will not waste alot of space here repeating all of the positive comments that you will find in the previous reviews. I'll only say that this was our 8th trip to Cuba and you would be hard pressed to find a better 3 star all inclusive resort anywhere in Cuba.

Therefore we were saddened to discover that a few items of women's clothing had gone missing from my partner's suitcase.
Naturaly we suspected it was the work of a light fingered chamber maid so out of principle we reported it our tour rep who reported it to hotel management. The maid was sent to our room and adamently denied having taking anything from the room and that was the end of the incident. I'm only writing this as a warning to others to keep tabs on your stuff. No one else reported thefts to our knowledge so it may have been an isolated incident. Hopefully hotel management will read this review and take action to correct the problem so that the hotel's good reputation can be preserved.

Andre
New Brunswick