I always read review & think "get a grip people" but this place was tired , in poor shape and the manager was a joke. The staff was great & deserved a better manager. We arrived to a room that was like a blast furnace when we opened the door. The lamp shade was ripped & hanging off. Picture frames were broken,water stains on walls, a/c leaked so bad we had to put a waste pail under it & then a towel to soften the noise. The manager walked around with his shirt off smiling ,what a putz!!!!, he should have been checking room conditions & maybe turning ac's on if he knew guests were arriving.ECO lodge NOT!What a joke. (If you want to visit a real ECO lodge go to Savegre Mountain Lodge...we stayed here earlier & it was beyond our wildest expectations. ) Receptionist at Whales & dolphins didn't know a thing about booking tours, couldn't speak English, she was really sweet though. We felt sorry for the staff as they were great & deserved a better place to work at.Food was NOT 4 star , after 1 meal we ate all our meals out in town , those were all great.

Having stayed at Cusinga Eco Lodge nearby this was considerably different. This is not particularly "Eco", it's a hotel with great views, but don't expect nature trails or much in the way of and "Eco" message. There are birds and animals galore but that's because of where they are rather than any special effort on their part. The rooms are adequate but a bit tired and maintenance is haphazard. A water leak in the room above us took 24 hours to fix, thank heavens it was coming down onto the balcony not into the room! I stood next to the wi-fi router on my block and got no useable signal! The principal problem when we were there was the level of staffing. One poor girl was manfully (womanfully?) trying to wait on all the tables in the restaurant and run the bar at the same time. Luckily for her the food in the restaurant was poor (mine was overcooked and uninspired the only time I tried it, a friend said her pasta was adequate) so very few people went back a second time. She was there until late at night and turned up, bleary eyed but cheerful at 7 am for breakfast where, again, she was alone. Breakfast was okay but not brilliant. There were other staff about but they were very thin on the ground. They were far more friendly and helpful than we had a right to expect, given they seemed to be terribly overworked. In summary - the view was fantastic, the pool was lovely (helped by the view) the employees were really nice despite all the problems they had, but resources seem to be a problem and standards suffered accordingly. I couldn't reccomend it as it stands today.

Indeed, the view is spectacular, the room was very satisfactory, the staff is very friendly (but also very slow), but the manager really ruined our stay! She does not speak one word of English so the receptionist had to translate our (very serious) complaint but she didn't seem to bother at all, very annoying. The food is average. And although we had a deal with the receptionist to stay for 2 extra hours after the normal check out time (mind you, we were the only 2 guests in the hotel at the time), they tried to charge us 50 USD for the extra 2 hours. This was never mentioned in advance so we did not pay the extra amount. This really topped it off for us, we stayed in 10 different hotels in Costa Rica but this was without a doubt, the worst experience ever!

The views from the pool and bar are spectacular, The rooms were very average and overpriced over the Christmas period. The food was very poor and there was a smell of poor sanitation in the restaurant.