We ended up staying 9 nights at Villa Pacande. It became our home base. The grounds are lovely and Marcela was a wonderful host. It was a real oasis outside the bustle of the city. The rooms are simple yet afford all the necessities. The service is family friendly and we were made to feel at home. We will certainly return to Villa Pacande the next time we have

This bed and breakfast is absolutely amazing, i stayed here for 2 weeks during a medical retreat that I was apart of in poverty ridden parts of Costa Rica. The owner Marcela is an amazing cook, shows great hospitality and really makes you feel at home. If you really want to be engulfed in Costa Rican culture and learn about what a great place it really is this is the place for you! I highly recommend this place!

in this place there is nice staff and owners
it is in good location and the prices are ok
but
they should clean the rooms becouse we found a lot of Ants on the bed and we didnt like it so much
the bedding are smell old
I think the can fix all this small problems in minutes
i hope they will do it soon.
It is good place only for 1 night - on the way to somewhere

I found Villa Pacande on the internet while staying in San Jose. We were looking for a good but not too expensive place near Poas to stay for one night and the website sounded as if this might be appropriate. First of all, the pictures on the internet are a bit deceiving. The "villa" is an old house/finca that appears to have seen better days. Yes, it has a yard but it doesn't seem to be kept in especially good condition. But what's most surprising is what many reviews say about "family run," "family atmosphere," "helpful, warm advice," etc. When we arrived, one of the ladies who works there came to open the gate for us. The man who apparently was the manager was youngish, somewhat distant and not overly "family-like" or welcoming. (And my husband and I are both fluent in Spanish, so there was no language barrier). We received a room off the main porch. It had a bed, a couple of night tables, and a tiny bathroom. It seemed clean but very small, in fact there was no space to even turn around in the bathroom. It was very, very basic--good, I imagine for campers, hostel fans and the like, but for older people or anyone expecting anything more, this would not be a great choice. We never saw any of the warm family atmosphere so many have mentioned. We had to pretty much guess everything--no information was given to us.
The breakfast was okay but nothing like what we've gotten in most similarly priced places where we've stayed. We did get gallo pinto as well as plain bread and some kind of fruit (I don't remember what). There was also cereal available The ladies who worked there in the kitchen and cleaning the rooms were friendly, in fact much more so than the manager.
I'm truly curious as to what happened during our stay to make it seem so different from the people who have given this hotel excellent ratings. I understand that the owners of Hotel Pacande in the town of Alajuela are also the owners of Villa Pacande--but apparently the head person wasn't at this place when we visited.