Blog by Patricia Houlihan - Personal Real Estate Corporation | August 14th, 2008
My prior trips to Nicaragua have
all been great experiences, including the food and accommodation. This trip, we decided to finish the trip off
by staying at what was supposed to be one of the best resorts in the
country-and the only all inclusive. Now
I admit that I am not a huge fan of all inclusives and when staying at them, I
tend to choose the more expensive ones in order to maximize the likelihood of good
food-an important part of any vacation.
However, when you only have one in a country, and when the web ratings
and reviews from people we know in Nicaragua were all pretty good, we
figured the risk was small....well we won't be going back there again. The resort, run by the Barcelo hotel chain,
had potential: lovely beach, large beautiful pool, an outdoor gym, etc.
However, while we only stayed 2 nights, we were glad to escape and wished we
had spent the last 2 nights in Managua
or Granada. The food was really bad; the only food option
(because it is low season and the occupancy was low) was the buffet. On the second night we were already so sick
of the food that we considered skipping dinner.
The rooms and facilities were nice but I was a bit concerned at the
massive pesticide spraying campaign that went on every morning-I have no idea
what was being sprayed but since we saw no bugs whatsoever and only one gecko,
I am sure whatever it was kills pretty much everything.....not a fan of those
chemicals and I would prefer to let nature take its course a bit more. Interestingly, we didn't see much in the way
of creatures anywhere except at our friend David's house in Granada-fortunately
it seems he minimizes the use of super toxic sprays. There we saw the most amazing (although a bit
scary) moth. I went to my room and into
the bathroom the first night-there was a moth so large (much larger than my
hand outstretched and much larger than the hands of most men) that I went to
ask our host if it was a decoration. It
really looked much to large to be real-it was about 3 times the size of his
daughter's hamster. Anyhow, he confirmed that it was real and he put it on the
end of a broom and carried it outside to carry on its life.....much more humane
than spraying it to death!
Okay enough complaining-on the upside, we
had great hotels in Granada ($45/night including breakfast), San Juan Del Sur
(beachfront, pool, $80/night including breakfast) and Leon (check out La Perla-
a beautiful renovation of an old home carried out by a talented American-thx
Jim it was great).....
