Latest Reviews for Guardalavaca

Not worth paying to go and see. Nothing there!

The holiday started off very good. Then went down hill! Rooms in need of repainting, furniture in lobby very poor(o.k for the dog to sleep on).Very dark in grounds and hotel area, low watt bulbs used. Beach not a lot of sand, not like the pictures you see! Pool area around beds dirty and muddy, never cleaned in the two weeks we were there. Low on supplies in bar and restaurant after first week. Trips very expensive! Didn't go anywhere. Tipping requried all the time (no better service) don't bother! ATTACKED by mosquitoes, over 200 bites on husband. Had to escape to our rooms after 16.00 hours. Met some lovely people, over all a good holiday. Will go back to Cuba but not this hotel.

Entertainment was good but we made our own entertainment most of the time. We made many friends with different guests during times around the bar! Lots of singing and dancing went on and a few cocktails thrown in!!!!! Take your own music unless you can sing!!!!

Holiday was fantastic. We went away with a group of different ages and all felt that the holiday was value for money and accomadated the age range of 18 - 65. We had such a fantastic holiday we are going away with a large group again this January. Recommended by Jane & Andy and family, Birmingham, England.

A fascinating friendly exciting resort

This was our second visit to Paradisus and we can not fault it in any way. The friendliness, food, location, beach and pool are all wonderful. Yes the accomodation does need a little attention but hey this is Cuba that we are talking about. We cant wait to go back. Just hope that all is well after the hurricaine in sept.

The beaches are white and spotlessly clean.The gardens are beautiful to walk through and the sea is cristal clear. You have three beaches to explore, one is very surcluded, so in the quiet season you can have it all to yourself. The bar along side the main beach is very friendly and the lunchtime meals are excellant. You are even seranaded by a very talanted trio while you eat and drink.The Spa is blissful and although you have to pay extra for any treatments it is worth every penny. I suffer from prickly heat and the first year we visited the resort I had to have medical treatment (excellant doctor and nurse on site)it cost me £35 but within 24 hours I was fine. Last year I felt the prickly heat coming on but instead of having any medication for it I went for a day at the spa and booked a seaweed wrap. It cost me £70 for the whole day, I was allowed to use their private pool and all the other vacilities along with my husband. The body wrap left my body feeling cool and I was completely fine for the whole two weeks we were there, so I will certainly be paying another visit to the Spa next year. The resort is every thing you could want for a wedding, or second honeymoon or just a romantic getaway. The resort is adult only, so your in good company.

We have never felt the need to visit the same place twice until we visited the Paradisus in Gaudalavaca. We first visited it in October 2006 and again in 2007 and we are going back in Febuary 2009. The rooms are very spacious and clean (just a little shabby) but the hotel was having a face lift to bring it up to standard. The staff have become our friends, they are truly wonderful people. The food is first class in the resturants and with 24 hour room service you need never go thirsty or hungry.

Just got back from Cuba and it was the best holiday we have ever had! We got caught in Hurricane Ike towards the end of our holiday but we still intend to go back when the hotel is rebuilt. The staff were amazing and looked after us really well. I wouldn't recommend going in Hurricane season but it certainly was an experience.

The rooms are lovely and the beds are HUGE!

The food is good and the a la carte restaurants are a nice treat - especially the Japanese.

Do take insect repellant to avoid nasty looking bumps in your photos but the repellants work really well so they can be avoided.

There isn't much to do outside the resort unless you book the organised trips so it is better for a relaxing holiday.

Your every whim is catered for - even down to free breakfast in bed.

Can't praise this place enough and hope they are able to reopen soon!

A lovely area! The beach is gorgeous with plenty of sunbeds. You can walk to the local market along the beach path and take in wonderful views of the turquoise sea. Everything about this resort feels "right". It is very safe. You can also take the train to a small fishing village for 10 cuc. Well worth the money as you get to go into a cuban house and the medical centre as well as see the locality.

ROOMS. We had a lovely room on the 2 nd floor with a seaview. This room also had a balcony that went around the side of the hotel and had two sunbeds on. The room was spacious and clean with an enormous king size bed which was very comfortable. Also in the room was a fridge, hairdryer and TV. The bathroom was quite big and apart from the fact that the door wouldnt close properly was fine ...remember this is Cuba!!! Maids cleaned every day and left beautiful towel arts for us on the bed. RESTAURANTS. Well, the food was OK. Breakfast , a selection of cereals, hot food, toast and omelettes or fried eggs cooked infront of you by the wonderful"egg man". In the evening there was another wide selection and you could always find something to eat. Pasta man would cook your pasta with your choice of extras. Lunch time was the same sort of thing., but we didnt eat in the reataurants then but stuck mainly to the grill bar. On offer there was a selection of sandwiches, toasties, burgers , hot dogs pizza and chips. A la Carte restaurants were very good especially the Italian. All the staff were helpful but especially the cleaners and gardeners!!! The grounds are spotless.

The area Guardalavaca is lovely.

I have literally just returned from a 7 night stay at the Club Amigo Atlantico and between my letter of complaint to Thomas Cook I thought that I should warn others off going. Cuba is an amazing place and the beaches are fantastic, white sand and turquoise sea... lovely, but we were unfortunate with where we stayed. The food is the main issue, it is absolutely appalling, no fresh food at all, only overcooked meat with sweet corn or rice and that's it. I didn't see any fresh fish or have one meal I enjoyed. The puddings consisted of watermelon which was obviously the same batch brought out all week as it was getting drier and drier. My boyfriend and I both got stomach upsets too. Our last night in Cuba I was expecting something wonderful from the speciality Cuban A'la Carte restaurant as we are both quite adventurous with food, but the kebab 'chef's speciality' which I was served looked ok but was REALLY tough, I couldn't even cut the meat with a knife, we walked out half way through. I am very easily pleased, but this place is rubbish.

The water sports was another big thing I was looking forward to, but they consisted of 2 kayaks, 1 pedalo and 4 snorkels for all the hundreds of guests who were staying.

Our room was ok, but on the first night we found 8 cockroaches running around - it was the worst night I've ever had... thankfully we moved rooms, but I wouldn't use the guest toilet in reception as I'd found cockroaches in there too, and we found them flying and running around the bar areas.

Basically all in all, I recommend anyone looking at this hotel should go and look elsewhere, there were people on the plane who I met who stayed in a hotel down the road, a 4* and paid a very similar amount and their food and service sounded AMAZING, I'm very jealous. Don't stay at the Club Amigo Atlantico, pay a tiny bit more and stay elsewhere; the Club Amigo Atlantico will be a waste of your hard earned money!

Guardalavaca is only basically a little village where all there is are the tourist hotels and a few houses where the staff that work in the hotels live! The beaches are stunning with very calm and safe to snorkel and swim in sea.

It is true that there is nothing to see outside of the hotel as it is pretty much in the middle of nowhere but everything you need is in the hotel and there are plenty of excursions to book if you want to see the real Cuba. The hotel is clean and well run with plenty of daytime sports and activities to get involved in if you wish, although the evening entertainment gets a little repetitive in a two week stay and finishes quite early, around 10.30 - 10.45. All of the staff work extremely hard and are very friendly, my son managed to cut his knee while we were there and required three stitches but the nurse in the medical centre at the hotel was alot more helpful and friendlier than most of the staff I have encountered in A & E departments in hospitals at home! The food is good and plentiful with always plenty of choice and there is also two a la carte restaurants which you have to book in advance which we found the Italian one to be the best. All in all an excellent holiday and we would definately return to Cuba and also to the Brisas Guardalavaca.

We went Thomas Cook & flew in their premium cabin, which was not worth the money. Only an inch or two extra legroom & the same food offerings as economy. On the outbound flight the complimentary drinks were curtailed early, as a couple got drunk & instead of refusing to serve just them, they refused everybody. On the flight home the stewardesses started to sell duty free from the back and as we were in row 3, it was all gone when it got to us. When I queried why premium cabin passengers had not been offered the same duty free goods as those in economy, the stewardess became very irate & rude. The moral of this is, don’t pay the upgrade, it’s just not worth it on this airline. Oh & yes the priority luggage labels used at check in, didn’t work either. Our cases were last off both ways, there & back.

When we eventually arrived at the hotel it didn’t get any better. The room allocations were appalling; none of the requests had been honoured. People who had requested upstairs rooms got downstairs & vice versa. It appeared that all of best rooms were allocated to the Canadian guests & the British just seemed to be second-class. Whether this because the British travel companies pay less, I wouldn’t know. All in all, we had 5 different rooms during our fortnight stay. Two rooms that we had rejected as they were out in jungle part of the hotel & 2 because the air conditioning was broken. This meant packing and unpacking all the time, which just became an annoying nuisance & a big waste of time. Some of the rooms & some of the bungalows are well situated in lovely garden surroundings, but others are right out in jungle (very dark & dingy).

The food on the whole is quite good, especially the Patio restaurant, our favourite, which we used five times. The Japanese was not as good as others we have been to, so only used it the once. The restaurant reservation man was very amenable, especially after a ten-peso tip, so we only ate in the buffet twice.

Drinks were of a high quality, if you tipped the waiters & bar staff you got ‘real baileys’, not Millwood cream or any of the other look a likes. So it really was worth looking after them, so they looked after you.

A word of warning, this really is an early morning ‘towels on sunbeds’ place, especially round the swimming pool. If you didn’t have a towel on sunbed by 7.00 am, then forget it. The beach is a better option if you don’t want to get up