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Cuba Hotel & Villa Reviews

Sol Pelicano 03/04/2006
Reviewers Rating: Fair
To begin with I must qualify our previous travel experience: My wife and I travel a lot and have stayed in hostels all the way up to Gold Crown resorts. We have been to the following places in the last 10 years so our experiences have been varied and we have seen a lot of cultures: Morocco, Cuba, Cancun, Venezuela, Spain, England, France, Amsterdam, St Martin/St Maarten, St. Barth, Jamaica, Portugal, Ecuador, Acapulco, Dominican Republic and a few others. I mention these for the sole purpose of being able to say that we are not "culture shocked" and unaware of how other countries and cultures function.
That being said, Sol Pelicano is one of the worst experiences of a "resort" we have had in a very long time.
The Price:
We stayed for 2 weeks at $2000.00 CDN each over Christmas and New Years 2005-2006
The Good:
The maids and cleaning staff were very courteous and did an exceptional job. Our rooms were always clean and they were very quick to bring us anything we needed.
The grounds are very nice, not quite finished yet (lots of plantings going on) but they should be lovely.
The beach is beautiful and very clean. The sand stays cool and there are plenty of places to walk to.
We rented scooters for 20.00 per day. This is the best way to get around as there is almost no traffic and you can come and go as you please.
The Havana Excursion is very good and we had a very nice time. Please see the Ugly for the CUBATOUR and TMR excursions.
The Bad:
Changing money became a bit of an issue if they didn't have the rates for the day. This meant the they wouldn't exchange money until as late as 10:30. This is only really a problem if you are going on an excursion that leaves at 9 am.
Laundry service, though offered, doesn't actually ever happen and you can't get a price anyway.
The maids cleaning the rooms at 6:30 am and moving the beds around waking everyone up is a nasty little habit. I can't fault them for being punctual, but I am on holiday and the sun doesn't even come up until 8 am.
The service at the restaurant: this depended on who you got not how much you tipped. We had 3 great waiters/waitresses who were very nice and we tipped them well, but we had several others that only showed up at the end of the meal and looked for a tip for clearing a plate. We had been serving ourselves for 20 minutes and had been completely ignored.
Room Bookings:
On our reservation slip and when we booked the trip we were told that we were in an upper room. When we arrived they told us that we weren't supposed to have a choice and the there were no upper rooms, but that they would keep an eye out for us (see the Ugly and bed bugs)
The Ugly:
The Food: I was prepared for bland, what I wasn't prepared for was canned. Every fruit and vegetable in this place comes from a can. We joked that the resort must be sponsored by Delmonte as there seemed to only be processes fruits and vegetables.
The seafood was terribly over cooked most of the time. The shrimp was pasty and the calamari was rubbery. I was served a lovely raw piece of lobster on New Years eve at the A La Carte, and when I explained that the food wasn't cooked I was given a dried up old one.
When the kitchen ran out of yogurt for the breakfast they watered what was left with powdered milk (it wasn't always mixed properly so you got lumps).
The "Cajun Style" Chicken was actually fish in tomato sauce (I thought they must have mislabeled it, but the same dish with same label showed up 5 times).
Flat beer is a nasty little surprise that seems to be common.
The famous "cardboard cakes". They look like they will be chocolate mousse or something, but they actually taste of nothing. It's weird. They are completely tasteless.
Most of the time they menu at the snack bar was unavailable other than french fries. I can understand this if a shipment is not in, but sometimes they would claim that there was no hamburgers and then 5 minutes later I'd see someone walking away with one.
The entertainment and entertainment staff:
This is appalling. Firstly if you do not speak Italian, don't bother. This resort is really geared to Italians, so much so that our rep with Air Transat had been fielding complaints on a fairly regular basis. There is no English, or Spanish, and frankly it got very old very fast.
It seems that "Club Bravo" is a supe- inclusive tour for Italians and most of the staff at the resort seem to work for them. This was very unpleasant only because they were very cliquey and had no interest in anyone else.
I have read where people felt left out due to the strong contingent of Italians, I thought that they may have been over sensitive but after 2 weeks this was something we certainly felt. My wife and I speak 3 languages between us and I rarely feel like we can't fake our way into something, but this was not somewhere where you could get by without being "full blooded". They simply didn't have time for you. It got bad enough at one point that one of the staff was very friendly with my wife and I only when he thought we were Italian and wouldn't even make eye contact once he realized that we were Canadian.
Bed Bugs:
I'm not kidding. The first few nights I woke up with terrible bites all over. At first I thought it must be mosquitos, so we made a special effort to kill any in the room. The next night was worse. We went around the room and killed anything that moved. In the middle of our third night I was sleeping in pants, socks, and a sweat shirt to avoid more bites.
We went down to the front lobby and explained to themwhat was going on. Her reply was priceless.." oh, they're in the mattress, well get you a new one." WHAT????? I have never experienced bed bugs even in $11.00 a night Hostels.
They then replaced our mattresses with what can only be descrived as another box spring. We went back down the next morning aching, tired, and itchy and demanded a new room. They then "amazingly" gave us the room we were supposed to be in in the first place. (see the bad)
Tours:
BE VERY CAREFUL!! We were very badly ripped off by CubaTour. We decided to take the plane ride and tour to Trinidad (the city not the country). This is fairly expensive, but seemed worth it at the time. When we booked the tour, however, I was becoming very gun-shy of the resort and specifically asked if the tour was in English. We were assured that it was, and so we spent the $300.00 dollars to go.
When we arrived we all piled onto the bus and waited for the tour to begin... it started in Italian, then in broken French..... then back to Italian. When we spoke to the guide she very sheepishly admitted that there was no English and that she didn't really even speak it. We spent the next 5 hours wandering around or sitting on a bus trying to figure out what was going on through the very broken French.
When we returned to the island, we spent 2 days trying to get our money back and were promptly told that since we got on the plane, we had had the experience and that we were not going to be compensated.
If this resort is a 3 1/2 star then I highly recommend that unless you really don't care about food, entertainment, comfort or tours that you stay a very long way away from Sol Pelicano.
We have lodged complaints with Air-transat Holiday and are awaiting their responses.

Adam Taylor

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