My wife and I stayed at the RIU Santa Fe from 04/25 to 05/02.

CHECK IN: More than half of the passengers from our flight stayed at the RIU SF.
Since we arrived as a very large group in two buses the RIU set up a welcoming area at the lobby and they had our room key ready. They said that they will deliver our luggage to our room but I had to retrieve them after lunch.
The RIU opened the Bravo bar near the lobby at 11:00 for us to help quench our thirst; this is much earlier then normal hours.

FACILITY: We were assigned to room 3218 which faces the back of the facility which is a sandy field.
As we were unpacking our bags the front desk called to ask if we needed anything.
We requested for a room facing the pool and with 2 beds. The next day, we got our request fulfilled. They gave us room 3229 which has a very nice view; see picture of the inside pool from our balcony.
I think that the rooms that have 2 beds are larger than the rooms with single bed; larger rooms end with XX04, 05, 12, 13, 20, 21, 28 & 29. See picture of evacuation map.
We think that building #3 pool side has the best view and second only to bldg #7 ocean side view. See picture of main area.
The SF has 2 lighted tennis courts, they are in good shapes but very dusty; it helps with line calls. You can make reservations for up to 2 days by calling the front desk; #9 from your room phone. They have rackets and balls to borrow but I brought my own racket and balls.
The RIU Palace also has 2 courts. One morning, we just walked on to one of them when the SF court are all used; condition of these courts are fair.
There are washrooms in “La Mision” and “Torote” restaurants. I marked WC on the 2 maps for all public washrooms.
The swimming pool next to the infinity pool is good for laps swimming and I think that it is the length of an Olympic size pool.
Yes, the pools are cold due to the recirculation of the water for the falls.
Only the pool areas have umbrellas/parasols. We would rather spend more time at the beach if the resort added parasols along with the rows of lounge chairs. Very few customers used the beach lounge chairs for that reason. See picture.

FOOD: Breakfast are served at “La Baja California”. It is good but not special.
Lunch are served at “La Mision” and “Torote” and their menus are slightly different. I prefer Torote because it has a larger varieties of food and the beach view is nice. La Mision faces the inside pool.
On the Friday and Sunday that we were there, they set up some food tables on the deck between the infinity pool and the lap pool.
On Saturday, they had a bar tender on wheels serving beer. See picture.
Buffet dinner are served at "La Baja California". It has the following serving areas: Mexican table, Italian bar, carving bar that serves veal, turkey or roast chicken (depending on the days of the week) salad bar, dessert bar and cafeteria type of food bar.
The food is very good until Monday night.
On Tuesday and Wed the quality of the food went South since the number of guests dropped to less than a third.
I highly suggest to have dinners at “La Baja California” on Friday, Saturday and Sunday; busy nights. Randy the executive chef cooked the main paella sea food dish in a tire size pan in front of the restaurant and they are excellent. His picture is featured in the RIU magazine. See picture of Randy & I.
In addition, a waiter walked around and served after dinner liquors on a cart.
We did not make any reservation at the specialty restaurants because La Baja offers a variety of food that we liked.
If your flight is in mid morning, the bus will come to pick you up before La Baja is opened for breakfast. I suggest that you make a sandwich and pack some pastries or fruits the day before your departure date.

ENTERTAINMENT: During our stay, Grease is the only good evening show. We didn’t care too much for the four out of 7 nights Reality/participation shows. See program.
The daytime entertainments are mediocre and they are not always happening.

We were disappointed with Apple vacation representatives services. They are there to sell us tours and to make their commissions. I ask one of them for direction to the Cabo San Lucas flee market and she pointed me to the Dolphin show area on the map.
The departure at the resort was chaotic because none of the representatives were there to organize the boarding on to the buses or checked if everybody are there to be taken to the airport. Some couples had to take different buses. The flight is scheduled to depart at 10:45AM and they wanted us to meet at the lobby at 6:50 AM. It took 40 mins to get to the airport and we were in the departing gate area by 8:30. We could have breakfast at the resort and still have plenty of time to buy duty free merchandises.

CONCLUSION: Go if you like to drink and hang around the pools and the pool’s bars.
Don’t go if you want to spend time at the beach and be entertained by the staffs.

We stayed at the Riu Santa Fe from April 26- May 3, 2008.

Check In:
Went VERY smoothly! Bags were at our building entrance within 15-20 minutes.

Room:
Our room was very nice- we had a king bed (not two beds pushed together) It was very clean, although we had a mosquito problem inside. Since they love me, my husband went to the front desk in the middle of the night to ask for spray. The staff politely told us there was none left. However, one of the staff knocked on our door about three minutes later holding a can of spray. We hadn't brought any repellant- so I would DEFINITELY recommend bringing some along with you. We didn't see any mosquitoes outside of our room however, so besides at nighttime- it was not a problem.

Food:
The food at the Riu was great. Definitely a variety for seafood lovers, pasta lovers, fruit / salad lovers, etc. The only thing was it was a bit of a hit / miss with the food being hot or cold.

Entertainment:
Every evening there is a theatre show. We found it quite good- (with a few cheesy things of course) Entertainment during the day happens mostly at the upper pool- but the pool overlooking the ocean where most people were did not have any entertainment except for the music coming from the bar.

Beach:
When isn't a beach gorgeous?
The only thing was that the beach is quite steep and there are very powerful waves & a strong current making it not very swimmable.


Hotel / Staff:
Clean, Clean, Clean.
There was never a moment when one of the staff wasn't wiping down the "street" lamps, scrubbing the benches, mopping the floors, collecting cups, landscaping, and at the same time always looking up and saying "hola" to you.
Staff was friendly and always wanting to help. A very nice gentleman "Kevin" at the breakfast/dinner buffet always made sure my chair was pulled out for me and our drinks were always topped off.

Tours:
I would definitely go to Lovers Beach. Its gorgeous!
We took a taxi into town, visted the mall & market shops. - this was something you didn't have to take an actual tour to visit which was great.

Try to remember the taxi # you go onto (as well as the color of the taxi) since I left my camera on one and didn't know any of this. Thank goodness we got it back with the help of one of the staff members.

Pools:
Great. The "eternity" pools are absolutely amazing, overlooking the ocean.
There are plenty of sun umbrellas for everyone to sit under!!!
...and many bars!


Overall, our stay at the Riu was very enjoyable & relaxing.

We stayed at the Riu Santa Fe for 6 days at the end of April 2008. The property looks great (it's less than a year old) and the staff were all friendly.

Our room was an "Ocean View Room" which meant if we walked out on our balcony and looked to the right we could see the ocean. The room was new and conveniently has a 4-liquor mini bar and mini fridge stocked (every 2 days) with 6 coronas, some Pepsi products and water. The balcony has 2 chairs and a table which can be useful for relaxing and watching the pool or ocean while sipping a corona.

It's an all-inclusive so don't expect Five-Star meals, but the buffets were good. Besides the buffet they offer 4 specialty restaurants: Asian, Italian, Mexican and a steakhouse. We tried the Asian restaurant, which was also a buffet and not very good, as well as the steak house which was OK. And of course all of the bars are included.

The pools were well maintained and attractive. Building 7 (the Ocean View Room building) overlooks the big pool that is adjacent to the ocean.

There is nightly entertainment ranging from bizarre (extremely strange comedy skits), to mildly entertaining (a lip-sync production of 'Grease').

The only problems we had were minor: our room wasn't made up when we arrived - which they remedied very quickly; a taxi strike focusing only on the Santa Fe and Riu Palace meant that we had to catch a cab to town to meet up with some of our tours - not the hotel's fault; and the wake-up calls we requested were very inconsistent (luckily we had a travel alarm clock). Other than those it was a great stay.

Overall we loved the Santa Fe and would stay there again.

My boyfriend and I just returned home yesterday from a fantastic vacation at the Santa Fe. We were there from Sunday April 27 until Sunday May 4. Overall everything was fabulous and I will try to cover as much as I can remember.

THE FOOD:
Breakfast is served only at La Baja California(the main buffet) from 6:30am-10:30am.There is the exact same layout for breakfast everyday, but theres pretty much every breakfast food available. Eggs many ways, made to order omelettes, waffles, pancakes, cold cereals, oatmeal, rolls, etc. **hint** If you are a coffee drinker, have it cup by cup out of the espresso machines located in every restaurant. The stuff they make in bulk is a little bitter.

Lunch is a buffet served at La Mision(the mexican restaurant by the front pools) and at Torote' (the steakhouse by the oceanside pools) from Noon- 3:30pm. Some things changed everyday, but for the most part you could expect to see a salad bar, a dessert and fruit bar, a "build your own taco" type area, hot dogs and hamburgers and a pasta area. These have ice cream machines at each.**hint** If you are finding it hard to tear yourself away from the pools, feel free to get a plate(or two) of food and bring it to your lounge chair by the pool. It is totally accepted by the staff and they will come pick up the plates when they come to pick up your empty glasses.

Dinner has many options. You can eat every night at the main buffet without reservations from 7pm to 10:30pm. We found the food to be very good and they had different dinner specials every night to accompany the regular standbys.They also have a different dessert special every night( fried apples and pineapple, individual made to order baked alaskas,etc) And Gelato(very rich and creamy italian ice cream) is also available every night. **hint** their regular premade dessert bar is not so good. Everything is very flavorless. We just ate the gelato and dessert specials.

As far as the "reservation restaurants" go, we only dined at the steakhouse and the Italian restaurant. Both were o.k. The shrimp risotto at the Italian place was awesome, but the service was a little lacking and the place was very small. I went down to the main buffet to make our reservations on monday morning( its at a little table to the left of the main buffet as you look at the front) and they will let you make reservations for tonight and tomorrow night.At 7:30am I recieved number ten. At 8am they start calling numbers(in order starting at 1) for you to come up and make your reservations. You have until 10 am to come back with your number and make your reservations, but you won't neccessarily be able to get reservations at the restaurant you want.**hint** on the thursday of our stay, they served a bunch of the entrees from the asian restaurant at the main buffet, so we pretty much got to eat there too.

THE BARS
The 3 poolside bars close at 6pm even though the pools don't close until 8pm. The two bars in the main square (in front of the buffet) don't open until 6pm and close at midnite. The sports bar is open 24 hours and is air conditioned. The sports bar also has burgers and sandwiches in a cooler if you are hungry when the restaurants are closed. They also have nachos there.

THE ROOMS
The rooms were very nice and clean. We were in building 5 facing the spa/gym, so we were pretty centrally located to everything.Be forewarmed that unless you are in building 7, there are no elevators. They will restock your mini fridge and booze bottles every other day, but if you need it stocked in between, just call the front desk and they'll stock it for you. The water pressure and showers are awesome, but be careful, the tubs can be a little slippery. Make sure your sliding glass door is latched all the way, otherwise your air conditioning will shut off. there's a sensor on the door that disengages the AC when the door is open. **hint** There are mosquitos down there and they will end up in your room every time you open the door, especially at night. We just put cortisone cream on the bites and they were gone the next day.

THE SITES TO SEE/ACTIVITIES
There is free entertainment every night starting around 9pm in the outdoor theater. We saw singers, comedy shows, their version of "GREASE" and even a showgirl act(think las vegas).

There's different activities every day by the front pool starting around 2pm. Even if you don't participate, its still fun to watch. We took the boat tour and snorkeling trip to Lover's beach/The Arch. It was a fun little side trip, although we didn't end up snorkeling once we got there because the beach was so busy we doubted we'd see any fish once we got underwater. We also took out Jet Skiis which was a total riot. I booked both of these activities ahead of time through JT WATERSPORTS through their website.If you book online, they give you a 10% discount.All you have to do is print out you receipt page and give it to them as your "ticket". They were great. very professional. We also went to Cabo Wabo, The Giggling Marlin and El Squid Roe. Atleast stop in to have a beer at these places. **hint** these places charge $4.50 per bottle of beer so either get toasted at the hotel before you go or plan to spend a lot to catch a buzz. There was a bar literally at the entrance to Cabo Wabo called Rips that had $2.50 coronas, pacifico,sol etc. and $3.00 Miller lite, Bud, Bud lite etc. We had quite a few there. They also have a special for a mexican beer(see above) and a shot of tequila for $3.50.Great deal if you like tequila.

I think I covered about as much as I can remember, but please feel free to ask any and all questions you can think of. I'd be happy to answer to the best of my knowledge. I'd go back here in a heartbeat.You definately get your money's worth.