Beautiful house. Great location. But many problems. Began with no concierge to welcome us and give help/get us settled. No promised welcome basket with fruits, snacks and champagne. No promised light lunch. Instead, off-duty staff (Sergio), was assigned to show us around, however, had minimal English speaking skills. When asked if concierge would come back today, he said, no. Next day. Walked through front door and were immediately hit with a strong musty smell. It was all over the house. In bedroom with no balcony, window shade wouldn't roll up; broken. Asked staff if he could fix it, and he said yes. At rooftop bar, noticed no water when we opened the sink faucet. Other than that, the tour was quick, as he was off duty and family was waiting for him. OK. Found card from Cynthia, our concierge, with her number and the # of the office. Tried both, and never got a connection. So, no info about where to shop for best food, etc. Next day, Cynthia showed up around 10. Nice person. Still having phone issues and unable to contact her. Thought we had worked out texting to communicate, but.... She spoke broken English, though we were able to get good info from her for an hour. Asked about musty smell...She acted surprised or confused. Told us it might be because the AC had been turned off and would probably clear up soon. -- It never did. Despite our efforts simmering oils, etc, we had to put up with the smell all week. Also asked where the staff lived. Seemed like they were close by because they were always around. Cynthia said, "Across the street". They actually lived in the Villa, as we figured out ourselves, a day or 2 later.
Then she left and we went shopping. Had more concerns about house and tried texting Cynthia. No response. Still had no luck phoning her or the office. When we got home, Lucia (our maid/cleaning person) had made us a wonderful snack of guacamole dip and salsa with chips. Though she spoke little English, she understood us pretty well, but there were still gaps in communicating. When asked how I could contact her she said, "Call". I told her we didn't have her number. And she said, "No, Cynthia." I explained we tried and couldn't get her by phone. She had no way to help us with that.
As days progressed, we had trouble with replenishing drinking water, which was stored in locked areas. Getting Cynthia to answer us by phone/text was impossible. Finally phoned our booking agent in New York when I was anxious about many things. She asked what number I was calling in Mexico and then asked if we were dialing 011 ahead of the number. We weren't, cause we weren't told we needed to!! Anyway, Kim Palmer in New York was the only person who seemed to really be concerned that we had issues in this house. It wasn't her job, but she did what she could to help from there. There were broken items all over the house and grounds. We asked a couple of times for the shade to be fixed and were always promised it would be, but it never was. My brother had no view of that beautiful ocean out his window. (Cynthia was told about the shade, too, from the beginning.) Two days in, his toilet flusher broke and he had no way to flush. Luckily, the previous day Lucia finally showed us where their apartment was when I asked her. So we knocked on the door and got Sergio to come and fix the toilet. And bring us more water, which was running low. So he fixed the toilet, but It broke again next day. Let him know and he fixed it a second time. But my brother could tell by how loose it was that it was just going to happen again. So he stopped using his toilet and now had use the one in the bedroom adjacent to his. There was a shower at the beach but the shower head didn't work. My son went to use the kayak and only could find one broken paddle, so couldn't kayak. Then he blew up a floatie for the pool. Soon to find that there was a hole in it and it was deflating. It was the only floatie. Our Jacuzzi was empty when we arrived. (Nothing like the pictures we had seen that showed it full with flowers floating in the water.) So I asked if THAT worked. Sergio said yes. So I filled it, sat in it and turned on the jets. FINALLY. Something worked when I really wanted it to. Only a minute later, all my hopes were dashed when I began to see big ants crawling around the top outside edges and wondered where they came from. Soon found out when I looked in the water to find about a hundred of them in there with me scrambling to get out, like I did. Apparently they had built a nest inside the jets. We saw eggs in with the ants when we turned off the jets. It was awful, to put it mildly. When we asked how long it had been since anyone used the jacuzzi, we were told kids were in it the week before. Couldn't imagine that to be true, but Sergio insisted. The cooks we arranged to have come for breakfast were terrific. Fixed us a great meal ! No English, but we worked well with them by pointing to things and saying, "omelette". That was Friday. On Saturday we hadn't planned to go anywhere, so when Cynthia asked if we still wanted them to come at 8 am we said, no, have them come at 9 o'clock instead. Since Saturday was the house staff's day off, the cooks from the previous day weren't working. They would send someone else. OK. I was awakened Saturday morning to noises in the kitchen. Got up to check the time and saw it was 6:30. When I looked out I saw my brother in the kitchen and at first thought he was making breakfast for himself. But then I saw 2 figures moving around behind him. Our cooks had arrived! Not only were they 2 1/2 hours early, but they were already cooking our food without ever asking what we might like them to cook. I approached my brother to remark on how early they were and he said, "They made 2 half pots of coffee...but they didn't use filters" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And there were plenty of filters there for them. He brought it to their attention and they smiled at him and nodded. But they left that sludge in the pots and never re-made the coffee for us. Communicating with these two ladies was impossible. They also burned the bacon and some chorizo they found, and the omelettes were under-cooked. There were other things, too. Small but irritating things, like a large pot I needed to use to cook pasta had only 1 handle. (Cooks for dinner were an extra charge, so we cooked our own dinners.) So once it was cooked, I couldn't carry a hot pot to the sink with only 1 handle. Instead we were forced to scoop it out wet from the pot to our plates. There was an elaborate blender for making smoothies that had a spot on top for putting ice for crushing. Pretty nice. But - missing an essential piece of that part. So no crushed ice. There's a palapa on the beach with 2 broken seats - couldn't sit on them. The dish washer was broken. There were a few lights that we couldn't get to turn on no matter what switches we flipped. And couldn't figure out how to get one of the ceiling fans in the living/dining room area to come on. Didn't really need it for air, but would have been nice for lighting over dining room table. And last but not least, for about an hour on the morning we were leaving, the power went out. Luckily I had used my blow dryer the night before, or I would have been extremely irritated with that. Many of the things I have mentioned weren't big things. But if you added them all up and realized how much you had paid for this rental, I can absolutely say it wasn't ready to rent. They got all their money up front, in good faith. But the management is denying most of what we reported. Because we decided to ignore many of the problems so that we could have SOME vacation time without being on the phone or running to the staff every minute, now we have no proof that some of it even happened and it's our word against the staff - and who wins that one? Not the innocent customer, that's for sure. To be fair, this may not be typical circumstances at Villas of Distinction. However, they did almost nothing to compensate for our week from Hell. At first they offered us a measly $500 voucher to use on another trip. Then after Kim put herself out and did all she could to advocate for us, they upped it to a $1500 voucher. Unfortunately, this was to be a once in a lifetime trip. My family can't afford to do this again, even if we had the least bit of interest in doing so. So this is our impression of Villa Nautica in Puerto Aventuras. Maybe if you are thinking about it, you could somehow get a trusted person to check the place out for you ahead of time? Otherwise, I wouldn't advise going there. The owner, after reading the list of things that weren't working, (which we sent Cynthia at her request), decided on his own to rush-ship a brand new ceiling fan to the Villa. We tried every possible switch and button in that house but couldn't get it to work. However, even though we never complained about it, even got by fine without the light and we had air conditioning for comfort, there was never any replacement fan delivered while we were there. (?) Would have been no time. Cynthia got that list on Friday, 2 days before we were leaving. Anyway, we figure he was trying to gain favor with the office to make it look like he cared. Apparently he was angry because he found out the fan DID work after he sent the new one. Whatever! I think it's appalling that this group of people did nothing to advocate for us or to at least take care of the real issues like a broken dish washer and toilet that couldn't flush and the very musty smelling air, etc...... Those were the real issues. I may even have laughed, - - - - - MAYBE - when those ants came pouring into the jacuzzi with me if that was all we had to deal with. But it turned out to be the house that kept on giving. That is, giving us nasty surprises. And for them to basically call us liars and do what little they did to help, is just not acceptable. This is why I'm writing this review....in case anyone out believes me and they're thinking of going to Villa Nautica. Maybe it'll hurt the house for rentals, at the very least. It just seems very unfair and uncaring of the owner and the management of that Villa. So it seems to us like a loss of revenue will be justified. They really need to stop taking people's good money unless they can first make a lot of necessary changes. Seriously need to get their act together!
All bookings are direct with the owner 