This review is based on a three night stay in late April 2007. (Apologies for the corny title of this review---trying to mix it up a little as the titles of my prior tripadvisor reviews I'm told are boring).

LOCATION: The Sheraton Hacienda del Mar (the "Resort") is a 35 minute drive on scenic Mexico Hwy 1 from the Int'l Airport in San Jose del Cabo. The Resort is located in a gated complex of several hotels and golf courses right on the ocean.

THE RESORT PROPERTY: The Resort is quite large and is comprised up of a central building (in a beautiful Spanish style with lovely artwork) and the individual rooms are located in individual "haciendas", or smaller buildings linked with pretty rolling sidewalks. It is very easy to get around on foot. There are several restaurants (including one very good small restaurant with excellent national [read: Mexican] cuisine (forgot the name, sorry). There are also at least 3 huge pools, the best of which is an infinity pool on the ocean near the hotel's principal building. The pool bar is terrific and makes excellent drinks. All the pools have waiter service.

The property itself is perfectly clean, manicured, and luxurious.

THE ROOM: Our room was located on the first floor of Building 33 ("Sauce"), contained an exceptionally comfortable king bed, an enormous bathroom with separate walk-in shower, separate toilet room, and separate jacuzzi tub that easily fit two people. The room was approximately 400 square feet. Lots of nice toilertries were provided and restocked on a daily basis. There was a well-stocked mini bar, a porch with a view of the desert, ocean, and the smaller "Delphines" pool (dolphins). There was also a large 10-person jacuzzi outside our room next to the pool.

The hotel also provided and restocked lots of small water bottles for us each day. The common areas of the hotel also offered free water bottles (not sure whether the water at the hotel was filtered or not--in my experience hotels this nice in Mexico filter their water for the Gringoes as a matter of course).

The wired Internet connection in the room was very fast and worked perfectly; however, my only gripe was the connection was approx. US$18 for 24 hours. Pretty steep.

ROOM SERVICE: We ordered breakfast twice which was delicious and delivered reasonably soon after ordering. The room service menu rates are in Pesos; however, the prices are comparable to those in the US (i.e., the steak on the room service menu will run you $35.00 same in Miami). The bar drinks at the pool also carry U.S. prices (e.g., approx. $8 for piña colada).

STAFF: The staff were exceptional. Though we spoke Spanish, most of the staff greeted us in good English. Suprisingly, most of the people we encountered in Cabo San Lucas and at the airport in San Jose del Cabo spoke pretty good English. back to the point, the staff were top notch and we got service that would be expected at any Four Seasons or similar hotel product.

EXCURSIONS: the hotel offered many excursions (i.e., whale watching, deep sea fishing, ATV-ing in the desert, etc.). We opted for the ATV adventure in the desert and had a BLAST! I believe the company was called Baja Adventures (or something like that). I highly recommend it. Our guide brought us up some pretty mountainous desert terrain and let us ride on the sand along the beach.

All in all, we had an excellent time at the Resort and would definitely go again. If you haven't been to southern Baja, you must check it out. Absolutely stunning!

My husband and I stayed for a week at this wonderful hotel! We had not made travel arrangements from the airport, and figured we'd find something when we got in. I do wish we would have coordinated with the hotel for a shuttle. We were confused when we landed and all these people are trying to get you to ride with them, and you're unsure who's legit. We did have a good bus trip to the hotel, for $15 per person, but the whole time you're pressured to sign up and put a deposit down for a time share presentation. You either need to be mean- and say no very very strongly, or just lie! Come up with a good story beforehand. But we did get a few free cervezas on the bus trip. It's not far, maybe 20 minutes or so. First impression of the hotel is - in a word, amazing. It's gorgeous. Check-in went smoothly,
we were taken by golf cart to our room. I was pleasantly surprised how wonderful our room was! I'm not used to Sheratons being overly nice, but our room was beautiful. The shower is HUGE, double vanity; amazing whirlpool tub. The bed was so comfortable, had a huge patio overlooking the golf course and pools with a view of the Sea of Cortes. I can't say anything negative about the room at all. Oh, there's also a mini-bar, which we used as our fridge. DEFINITELY visit the market onsite, where you can purchase liquor and mixers. You'll spend a fortune on drinks if you don't, I'm sure. We bought little snacks too, like cheese and crackers. Definitely ask the concierge for a schedule of the Happy Hours, which feature 2 for 1 drinks. There's basically a Happy Hour somewhere on the resort all day long, you just have to hop from bar to bar. That brings me to the
restaurants- there are several of them. We ate a lot at Las Sirenas, which overlooks the Sea and the pools, and is very casual and has typical bar food. Burgers, chicken fingers, tacos, enchiladas, salads, sandwiches, etc. The Chips and Salsa with guacamole is wonderful there. Everything- no matter which restaurant you choose, is pricey. We ordered room service every day for breakfast, and always got the continental, which was about $17, but you got coffee and fruit and a few pastries. The coffee in the mini-bar was like $5 anyway. (Buy a few jugs of water from the market onsite.) We had dinner one night at Pitahayas- it was pricey- but INCREDIBLE. The food was delicious, and the service was impeccable- truly a 5 star experience. Try the Red Basil martini! I had the Trilogy of Seafood for my entree- it was wonderful. A couple days we played volleyball on the beach, and our feet were scorched. The sand is like a thousand
degrees, so if you have "water shoes" wear them!!! The pools at the hotel were gorgeous- plenty of places to swim, and a swim up bar. The infinity pool is beautiful. Everyone at the hotel spoke extremely
good English- I'm sort of fluent in Spanish, and would speak to the staff in Spanish, but they'd always respond in perfect English, go figure? The only outing we went on was deep sea fishing. I enjoyed it, but my husband was disappointed. He wanted to "do more." The crew
does everything for you, and when they get something, they just give the rod to you to reel in. That's it. It's a lot of sitting around, but heck, the view is amazing. We did catch a huge Marlin though, and
that was an experience in itself! We never did go into town, Cabo San
Lucas, or anywhere else, to sitesee or go for a meal. We would get up, have breakfast, and start drinking "Diamantes Tropicales" a wonderful mango/rum drink, and ended up staying at the resort the whole time. But we had a fabulous time- this place is exquisite, the service is wonderful, truly. I would come back here 100% and recommend it for any vacation, honeymoon, etc. Just know that the food and drink are a little pricey, but other than that, everything is just perfect.

Four college friends and I stayed at the Sheraton in September of 2005. We travel internationally every year and found that this resort, albeit smaller was the best yet. The poolside activities were fun. We learned salsa dancing, played spanish bingo and even Tequila volleyball.

The activities staff were wonderful, especially Ramone. I must agree that the timeshare pressure to attend a presentation was a little unwarranted. We agreed to attend only to be treated like we couldn't afford the presidential package. After almost being refused to see the higher priced package we terminated our tour.

We did enjoy half off benefits for other activities for attending the presentation. We went horsebacking riding, and ATV'ing which was the most fun I had ever.

The room was fantastic and very clean and the maid staff was very courteous. We went in September so there were no children on the resort (yippee) and the temperature was not scorching.

This is a beautiful property with generally excellent service. However, I really didn't appreciate that when we arrived, after a long day of traveling when we wanted to go straight to our room, we were forced to sit through a pitch to try to get us to sign up for a time share tour later in our trip. The front desk said, "So and so will give you some info about enjoying the property and tell you your room assignment, etc. etc." We had to spend 20 minutes listening to a pitch from this woman about taking a time share tour in exchange for a gift certificate. She was trying to qualify us with regard to our income and marital status and really delayed giving us our room keys until we sat through her pitch. Even when we made it clear we weren't interested, the pressure was on. We tried to move things along by saying we'd think about it and let her know, but she insisted we had to act now. Really, it was obnoxious and really cast a pall on our stay.

We have stayed at other Starwood resorts where there were time share/vacation club sales going on, but in other cases it's been very low key and they were willing to leave us alone when we said we weren't interested. Certainly, we have never been harrassed like this within minutes of arrival. It was really disappointing.