Monday, January 5, 2009

we arrived at Costa del Hell

Someone recommended the all-inclusive Costa del Sol in Cartagena to us. I was reluctant because it was the bottom-tier hotel and there´s no food worse than an unlimited amount of bad food. We made the reservation through a travel agent who also said it was a good choice. We were traveling the day we made the reservation, so I didn´t have a chance to go online and check out tripadvisor.com.
Boy, did I make a mistake.
Last night, before leaving, I had a chance to check out tripadvisor´s reviews, most of which said the place was awful, except for a few that seemed to have been written by the hotel manager.
We arrived, and the smell in the lobby that we were warned about was there. The floors were dirty. We immediately inquired about switching hotels, and we´ve spent our first day doing that.
Then we had lunch. There literally put out potatoes that were just boiled, just plain potatoes. There was pasta that I swore had no sauce whatsoever. Then Luis said there was a light sauce and I saw some garlic but couldn´t taste anything but pasta. There was a decent chicken dish.
I saw the Pepsi machine (i would have never booked there if I knew they didn´t serve Coke). But even worse, they soda machine didn´t even work. They had one bottle of soda in a plastic 2.5-liter container. When they ran out, the woman had to get permission from a higher-up to open another bottle.
Right now, I´m in the office of Caribe, a very nice hotel, while our travel agent looks into switching us to this hotel. Avianca, who put together the package deal, says there is availability starting tomorrow.
gotta go to avianca to change our reservation ASAP
more later.

1 comment:

squirrelmama said...

If you had known you were going to be subjected to bad smells, rotten food, shabby treatment and unprofessional behavior, you could have stayed at Newsday and saved yourself the time and expense. Glad you are moving uptown to a better set of digs.