What a great place.

The hotel to be in in Monteverde.

It's in a great location. Try to get in the 500 block -- the 600 block is way up, and the 500 block has the pool.

It's in a beautiful setting. Everywhere is walkable (as long as you're ok with walking 10-20 minutes to get to town). Good restaurants around. Breakfast was the best we had in costa rica. The views are incredible.

As an overview, the El Establo really seems to be two hotels – one excellent and the other dreadful. BE SURE that you don’t book their “standard” rooms (the dreadful section) unless you’re a very sound sleeper or it’s very important for you to save $20 per person per night (or you’re the kind of person lulled to sleep by the sound of motorcycles and buses revving outside your room). Don’t be fooled into thinking the difference is only in the view.

Here’s the more detailed description. The El Establo hotel that you see on their website shows only the deluxe rooms or better. Those rooms are clean, quiet, attractive, and have great views. The only negative is that you do have to walk uphill, away from the road (they have frequent shuttles to take you to your room, if you want one). Some rooms are quite a distance away from the dining room so you’ll probably want to use the shuttle.

El Establo also offers what they call Standard rooms. They’re not shown on the website in pictures, nor can you book them via the website – they have to be deliberately requested. These are rooms that most North American travelers would call sub-standard unless they were back-packing their way across the continent. Paper thin walls, ill-fitting doors with gaps at the top, window slats that don’t fully close…and in our room, a host of other minor items such as one ceiling fixture burned out and the other with only a bare bulb, no shampoo, employees sitting and chatting in arm chairs just outside our door at 6:00 am (we could make out every word of their conversation).

Frankly, even with all the above-listed negatives, it was survivable and maybe even of interest to the extreme-economy traveler who is also a sound sleeper. The rooms are right beside the main road and the hotel entrance. Up to about 1:00 am, you’ll be serenaded by a bevy of local sounds – young people walking by your window for a cigarette and a chat, the revving of motorcycles, sporadic car traffic….and wake at about 5:00 am to similar sounds, supplemented by buses arriving and departing starting at about 6:00 am.

And because your walls are so thin, and the windows and doors so ill-fitting, it’s just like having that jamboree in your bedroom!

To be fair, the hotel management told me they don’t market these rooms on their website (they seem a little embarrassed by them). They only offer them to people that want to save money, and they told me they warn people that the rooms aren’t as good (I doubt they adequately disclose just how noisy the rooms are, but who knows).

How did we happen on these rooms, you might ask? Some outrageous, probably deliberate, short-sighted decision-making by Signature Vacations, our Tour Operator (in Canada) in order to make a little more money from their customers. It’s outrageous that they selected these rooms as part of the package, did not disclose their dreadful quality to their customers and did not suggest/offer an upgrade, despite certainly having visited the facility before choosing to market it. With proper disclosure, not one of the 21 of us on the tour would have hesitated to pay the relatively minor upgrade fee.

And the really frustrating part is that we ended up spending 2 of our hard-earned 7 day vacation exhausted, stressed and cranky, which then spilled over into other days as well. So much for a relaxing vacation!!

Some lessons learned:

1) don’t trust a tour operator’s brochure unless they’re very specific about what level of room they’ve booked for each leg of your tour. And if they are specific, check out the hotel’s website to see if you can obtain better information about the room. Even then, you might be fooled, so the reputation of your tour operator is also important.

2) Beware of Signature Tours. I can’t say they pull this nonsense with all their tours, and certainly the reps we met were very nice people. However, this had to have been a deliberate cynical decision at headquarters that demonstrates a cavalier attitude about customers – save some money wherever you can (eg. on sub-standard accommodations) and perhaps mollify disgruntled customers only when they complain. Sounds like a profitable proposition! When this kind of decision is made at headquarters, you have to question the ethics of the entire company.

I've now sent them a written complaint and several emails over 3 months to try to learn how they could have blown this one so badly and blatantly, but all I get are automated "we got your email" answers. Pretty pathetic!

This is a great jumping off spot for the Monteverde Cloud Forest and other Monteverde activities. Great rooms with great views. The rooms are in groups of buildings which ascend the hill behind Reception and the restaurant. Lots of people have commented on the tough climb to the higher rooms (they have higher numbers) which can be almost a kilometer away. You DO notice the hill at that high altitude. (We walked up to go birdwatching.) The hotel is well run and the restaurant is excellent - a very good breakfast buffet. The tour desk is exceptional. It is staffed from early morning to late at night, and the staff are all well-informed and very helpful - they know the difference between the many ziplines, which night walks are best, etc.

Though it wasnt our first choice, it was one of the few places available for our trip in Dec 06. The property is huge. Our room was in the highest building giving it 180 degrees of beautiful views. The road to this building was long and steep and always need to use the shuttle (provided by the hotel) to go to the reception or the restaurant.

Breakfast buffet was efficient and plentiful.

The rooms were large and spacious. The bathrooms were very well done and again spacious. It appeared that this was a new building.

There is also a full service spa in this hotel. Great place to relax.
The reception also has a (busy) conceirge service where they had a large variety of activities and information. They were helpful.
Overall great stay.