I visited Cabo San Lucas on business and stayed at the RIU Santa Fe. We had 3 rooms for 7 nights. The hotel and grounds are in great condition. There are lots of activities, pools, and plenty of helpful staff. The restaurants are buffet style and are of very good quality. My only complaints were that there are not more rooms with ocean views and that the pools and jacuzzis are not heated so during February it was impossible to swim. Other than that I felt that this is a very nice hotel for a very affordable price. I personally do not enjoy all inclusive resorts but I do believe the RIU is a very nice hotel and would book with a RIU hotel in the future.

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.