Iberostar Papagayo
In order to save money on our trip, we booked a flight/room
deal, one where we would have no idea where we were staying until
we arrived. It's kind of a lottery on whatever space is left over
after the people who paid twice what we did took up all the good
spaces.
All we knew was that we would be in a four-star hotel, in an apartment
not a room. That seemed fine to us at the time we booked.
We wound up at the Iberostar Papagayo. The hotel sits on a cliff, about
a twenty minute walk from the beaches of Papagayo, and a 3 euro cab
ride from the center of Playa Blanca. It is divided into two separate
spaces - apartments surrounding a pool inland, and rooms surrounding
another pool overlooking the Atlantic on the sea side. We thought that
was just great, until we saw our apartment.
We wound up in the back, in the corner, on the first floor, with a view
to a wall, and a construction site across the street.
I was not looking forward to sitting on our porch for two weeks staring
at a white wall and the occaisonal passersby. But, fate had other things
in store for us.
The Iberostar Papagayo is one of the many brand new hotels in Playa
Blanca. Fortunately, it was still going through its teething time when
we arrived. Aside from the fact that there were still bar code labels
on just about everything in the apartment, the contractor had still not
quite finished the plumbing.
Two days into our stay, and after noticing that the water had ceased
functioning once, then came back, Ulla turned on the water in the sink
in the bathroom and all sorts of interesting things immediately started
flooding out of the drain in the bathroom floor.
After a call to the front desk, a visit by some very concerned people,
and the arrival of a backhoe, we were moved to another, much nicer,
second floor apartment with a view overlooking the pool and Papagayo.
THEN we started to really enjoy our stay at Iberostar Papagayo.
