the definitive view of a holidaymaker in Sosua
Firstly, I want to say that all the help and advice offered by various people on this forum was pretty much spot on, with the exception of the time an innocent question about the hotels weekend residence numbers was taken completely out of context by some, and then used by a moderator to showboat his authority... other than that, we certainly got a decent heads up with a lot of the things we planned, so thank you.
Secondly, I'm only going to post this on here as it is in stark contrast to all the bile on more common sites like TripAdvisor and Holiday Watchdog relating to Casa Marina Reef and Sosua, and I don't want it associated with all the habitual ****ers and moaners who seem to frequent those sites In fact, I'm sure a couple of our excursions were attended by some typical TripAdvisor contributors, namely the American group moaning that everything was bigger/brighter/more knobs on in Miami/LA/New York, and the miserable Canadians moaning about our half day city tour going on too long meaning they wouldn't be getting back to the hotel in time for the afternoon buffet. As I write this, I'm sure the only negative points to follow will only revolve around fellow foreign tourists.
I really don't know where to start, so porabably best to break down into categories and try to follow something of a linear route...
ARRIVING / TRAVEL AGENT
No problems whatsoever at the airport, coming or going. A couple of immigration forms given to us on the plane with half an hour to landing, not best pleased with the airlines timing on that. Airport personnel were pleasant enough, none of that bag pilfering I read about on here a while ago.
Our travel agency rep meeting was the first negative aspect of the trip. I understand the hard sell methods, but they had already gotten nearly ?2,000 off us and weren't going to get anymore. But I didn't like the tactic of underselling the town and its people. Every service offered by the hotel was undersigned with its negative equivalent to be found in the town... from being ripped off on currency exchange (I got 35 pesos/dollar on the street as opposed to 34 in the hotel), uninsured tours, tours exploiting the locals etc etc... yes I'm aware there may well be those tours somewhere, but the impression given was that all but the Thomas Cook affiliated ones were dodgy. Having had great assistance from Linda at Mel Tours over the preceding few weeks in planning a 2 week schedule, I knew it was all bull**** and made sure afterwards the rest of the group at the meeting knew where Lindas office was. The meeting was 5 minutes orientation, 55 minutes hard sell. Having already been greeted by a smile and a cheery 'hola' from Catalina, our maid, I was EXTREMELY ****ED OFF at the way the safety deposit boxes were being sold for $50 with a very subtle threat that it'd be a worthwhile investment... some may well have been scared into parting with cash. All that aside, it was time to enjoy our vacation....
CASA MARINA REEF
Beautiful people, beautiful grounds, lovely beaches, clean and efficient room, great restaurants and varied buffets.... none of this can be found on TripAdvisor but that's the reality. I'm sure the fact it's not a four-star hotel is probably down to some stupid technicality like not serving fresh lobster or some rubbish like that. The grounds and pools were cleaned from midnight to 8am every night. The staff, almost without exception, were amazing. In keeping with hotels all over the world, the reception staff are a bit moody, but who can blame them when their colleagues are elsewhere in the resort having more interaction with the guests and enjoying more of the weather?! Special mention must go to the Kiko entertainments team... on hand from 9am tl the early hours, always with a smile and never failing to put on an amazing evening show. Jukebox was the best of the lot. Was a bit dissappointed that the market nights on the resort was basically the same old tat as can be found on Sosua beach, in the shops or from anywhere else you care to look, but the reason for that became clear during our Puerto Plata excursion... more on that later in another thread...
I LOVED it when the hotel filled up with Dominican people on the Wednesday of our first week thorugh to the Sunday, coinciding with the end of school term I understand... not just because it WASN'T rammed with "pool ****ing kids, arrogant parents and general riff-raff causing 20 minute queues at the buffet" as TripAdvisor would have you believe, but because it created more of a fun pool scene, though I suppose I was delighted with the added bonus that it did **** off some of the more narrow minded foreign visitors as well! One word on that.... whilst waiting in line at the buffet, one young Dominican lad in front of me offered to step aside and let me go first. So much for rude and arrogant. I didn't take him up on his offer with a smile and a handshake.
The staff also went above and beyond when my partner had an unfortunate encounter with a medusa fish/jellyfish thing. Firstly, two of the Kiko team broke off from the beach game they were organising. Victor, first on the scene, took charge and organised the small group of people gathered, including despatching a couple to fetch some vinegar. When this failed, the female Kiko member with Victor (to my eternal shame we never got her name nor saw her again as she was off on our last couple of days) radioed ahead to the doctors office and escorted my partner there whilst I collected our stuff from the beach. Upon getting to the docs office, I was coldly given a couple of minutes to comfort my partner being being told abruptly I need to cross the entire resort to our room for the passport and insurance documents, leaving her on her own with strangers. Thankfully the girl from Kiko offered to stay and was still holding her hand when i returned 20 minutes later. The reason I ramble on about this is because the medical provision was yet another inflated scam to extort money from tourists (albeit via their insurance, so it's a bitter-sweet dilemma)... $80 alone for a consultation, $200 for treatment and god knows what for any drugs used/prescribed. Needless to say, to see my partner wired up like an ICU patient and given two marker pen sized syringes full of anti-venom, then 'prescribed' enough drugs to bring peace to the middle east (none of which were required after less than a day of their prescribed 10 day duration) was a bit of a ****er and another sour point.
But I'm sensible enough to base my opinion of the hotel on the important things like it's staff and our comfort. If the food's naff, you can go elsewhere, if the enterntainments naff, you can go eleswhere.... and so on. But even if these things were naff (which they most definately weren't)... we'll be coming back to this hotel again thanks to the wonderful people who work tirelessly to provide a great experience.
SOSUA
Whilst still getting accustomed to my ridiculous flip-flops, I took a tumble on the pavement. From out of nowhere, six locals appeared to get me back on my feet. In England, people stand by and laugh. Everything we were warned about in our Rep meeting dissipated within 10 minutes of our first venture off the resort. Linda of Mel Tours, not for the first time going above and beyond the call of duty, kindly took us on a guided tour of the town before heading to the beach. she introduced us to Albert on the street leading to the beach and he was the first to get a pinch off us.... 400 pesos for a large beach bag that endured our entire stay. On the whole, 'no gracias' forcefully but with a smile to the vendors was more than sufficient en route to our spot on the beach every time. Only on the Sunday did we get man-handled a couple of times, but this was probably due to the word on the street that I was on the look out for a particular hawaiian shirt! (which was duly found for me before we reached the town side of the beach from our base at the British Bulldog Pub.... of which I urge EVERYONE; British, American, Canadian, German, whatever... to seek out about halfway down the beach. Chas and Vanessa are the loveliest people, very welcoming and helpful, not to mention very reasonably priced food and drinks. The guys with the loungers in front of the pub are great, always on hand with drinks, snorkelling gear, bread for the fish...anything. And directly out front about 400 yards is a great area of reef for snorkelling, no wonder the catamarans always start off there. The guys you hire the loungers from will always keep an eye on your gear, no questions asked. Vendors would pass by on the beach every 5 minutes or so, offering everything from fresh shrimp to a guitar serenade! After a first 'no gracias' they would always just walk on by, perhaps asking once again in the afternoon. Never did it annoy us in any way, actually it enhanced our experience.
Some evenings and afternoons were spent at Ruby's Lounge, another top-notch establishment with great staff. Steven and Erica in particular made us feel very welcome, and together with Linda, Chas and Vanessa, we will be staying in touch until our next visit.
I can't speak highly enough of some of the characters we encountered... 'looky looky cheapy cheapy' was still ringing in our ears for days after our return! But all were friendly, smiling and not pushy at all. Even the guys in Atlantic Foto were kind enough to let us use their computer on an almost daily basis to review our photos being taken, having smashed it's display screen on an excursion. Never got called 'Gringo' once... due to the frequency it appears on here, I thought i'd hear it a lot.
I thought Sosua was a town of great potential, though the constant 'verde' signs was a sad sight. Lots of beautiful buildings looking full of promise were in a delapitated state, either neglected or half built, hard to tell. It certainly didn't look rammed with tourists, Mondays and Tuesdays on the public beach were especially quiet. I sincerely hope this is only a direct result of the current economic climate and not a sign of the fickle tourist industry either moving across the island or on to a different island all together.
Maybe I could have bypassed all the above waffle and simply say; i'd be happy to return year after year until the day I die' eh?
When I got time I'll waffle on about the excursions we did.....
Firstly, I want to say that all the help and advice offered by various people on this forum was pretty much spot on, with the exception of the time an innocent question about the hotels weekend residence numbers was taken completely out of context by some, and then used by a moderator to showboat his authority... other than that, we certainly got a decent heads up with a lot of the things we planned, so thank you.
Secondly, I'm only going to post this on here as it is in stark contrast to all the bile on more common sites like TripAdvisor and Holiday Watchdog relating to Casa Marina Reef and Sosua, and I don't want it associated with all the habitual ****ers and moaners who seem to frequent those sites In fact, I'm sure a couple of our excursions were attended by some typical TripAdvisor contributors, namely the American group moaning that everything was bigger/brighter/more knobs on in Miami/LA/New York, and the miserable Canadians moaning about our half day city tour going on too long meaning they wouldn't be getting back to the hotel in time for the afternoon buffet. As I write this, I'm sure the only negative points to follow will only revolve around fellow foreign tourists.
I really don't know where to start, so porabably best to break down into categories and try to follow something of a linear route...
ARRIVING / TRAVEL AGENT
No problems whatsoever at the airport, coming or going. A couple of immigration forms given to us on the plane with half an hour to landing, not best pleased with the airlines timing on that. Airport personnel were pleasant enough, none of that bag pilfering I read about on here a while ago.
Our travel agency rep meeting was the first negative aspect of the trip. I understand the hard sell methods, but they had already gotten nearly ?2,000 off us and weren't going to get anymore. But I didn't like the tactic of underselling the town and its people. Every service offered by the hotel was undersigned with its negative equivalent to be found in the town... from being ripped off on currency exchange (I got 35 pesos/dollar on the street as opposed to 34 in the hotel), uninsured tours, tours exploiting the locals etc etc... yes I'm aware there may well be those tours somewhere, but the impression given was that all but the Thomas Cook affiliated ones were dodgy. Having had great assistance from Linda at Mel Tours over the preceding few weeks in planning a 2 week schedule, I knew it was all bull**** and made sure afterwards the rest of the group at the meeting knew where Lindas office was. The meeting was 5 minutes orientation, 55 minutes hard sell. Having already been greeted by a smile and a cheery 'hola' from Catalina, our maid, I was EXTREMELY ****ED OFF at the way the safety deposit boxes were being sold for $50 with a very subtle threat that it'd be a worthwhile investment... some may well have been scared into parting with cash. All that aside, it was time to enjoy our vacation....
CASA MARINA REEF
Beautiful people, beautiful grounds, lovely beaches, clean and efficient room, great restaurants and varied buffets.... none of this can be found on TripAdvisor but that's the reality. I'm sure the fact it's not a four-star hotel is probably down to some stupid technicality like not serving fresh lobster or some rubbish like that. The grounds and pools were cleaned from midnight to 8am every night. The staff, almost without exception, were amazing. In keeping with hotels all over the world, the reception staff are a bit moody, but who can blame them when their colleagues are elsewhere in the resort having more interaction with the guests and enjoying more of the weather?! Special mention must go to the Kiko entertainments team... on hand from 9am tl the early hours, always with a smile and never failing to put on an amazing evening show. Jukebox was the best of the lot. Was a bit dissappointed that the market nights on the resort was basically the same old tat as can be found on Sosua beach, in the shops or from anywhere else you care to look, but the reason for that became clear during our Puerto Plata excursion... more on that later in another thread...
I LOVED it when the hotel filled up with Dominican people on the Wednesday of our first week thorugh to the Sunday, coinciding with the end of school term I understand... not just because it WASN'T rammed with "pool ****ing kids, arrogant parents and general riff-raff causing 20 minute queues at the buffet" as TripAdvisor would have you believe, but because it created more of a fun pool scene, though I suppose I was delighted with the added bonus that it did **** off some of the more narrow minded foreign visitors as well! One word on that.... whilst waiting in line at the buffet, one young Dominican lad in front of me offered to step aside and let me go first. So much for rude and arrogant. I didn't take him up on his offer with a smile and a handshake.
The staff also went above and beyond when my partner had an unfortunate encounter with a medusa fish/jellyfish thing. Firstly, two of the Kiko team broke off from the beach game they were organising. Victor, first on the scene, took charge and organised the small group of people gathered, including despatching a couple to fetch some vinegar. When this failed, the female Kiko member with Victor (to my eternal shame we never got her name nor saw her again as she was off on our last couple of days) radioed ahead to the doctors office and escorted my partner there whilst I collected our stuff from the beach. Upon getting to the docs office, I was coldly given a couple of minutes to comfort my partner being being told abruptly I need to cross the entire resort to our room for the passport and insurance documents, leaving her on her own with strangers. Thankfully the girl from Kiko offered to stay and was still holding her hand when i returned 20 minutes later. The reason I ramble on about this is because the medical provision was yet another inflated scam to extort money from tourists (albeit via their insurance, so it's a bitter-sweet dilemma)... $80 alone for a consultation, $200 for treatment and god knows what for any drugs used/prescribed. Needless to say, to see my partner wired up like an ICU patient and given two marker pen sized syringes full of anti-venom, then 'prescribed' enough drugs to bring peace to the middle east (none of which were required after less than a day of their prescribed 10 day duration) was a bit of a ****er and another sour point.
But I'm sensible enough to base my opinion of the hotel on the important things like it's staff and our comfort. If the food's naff, you can go elsewhere, if the enterntainments naff, you can go eleswhere.... and so on. But even if these things were naff (which they most definately weren't)... we'll be coming back to this hotel again thanks to the wonderful people who work tirelessly to provide a great experience.
SOSUA
Whilst still getting accustomed to my ridiculous flip-flops, I took a tumble on the pavement. From out of nowhere, six locals appeared to get me back on my feet. In England, people stand by and laugh. Everything we were warned about in our Rep meeting dissipated within 10 minutes of our first venture off the resort. Linda of Mel Tours, not for the first time going above and beyond the call of duty, kindly took us on a guided tour of the town before heading to the beach. she introduced us to Albert on the street leading to the beach and he was the first to get a pinch off us.... 400 pesos for a large beach bag that endured our entire stay. On the whole, 'no gracias' forcefully but with a smile to the vendors was more than sufficient en route to our spot on the beach every time. Only on the Sunday did we get man-handled a couple of times, but this was probably due to the word on the street that I was on the look out for a particular hawaiian shirt! (which was duly found for me before we reached the town side of the beach from our base at the British Bulldog Pub.... of which I urge EVERYONE; British, American, Canadian, German, whatever... to seek out about halfway down the beach. Chas and Vanessa are the loveliest people, very welcoming and helpful, not to mention very reasonably priced food and drinks. The guys with the loungers in front of the pub are great, always on hand with drinks, snorkelling gear, bread for the fish...anything. And directly out front about 400 yards is a great area of reef for snorkelling, no wonder the catamarans always start off there. The guys you hire the loungers from will always keep an eye on your gear, no questions asked. Vendors would pass by on the beach every 5 minutes or so, offering everything from fresh shrimp to a guitar serenade! After a first 'no gracias' they would always just walk on by, perhaps asking once again in the afternoon. Never did it annoy us in any way, actually it enhanced our experience.
Some evenings and afternoons were spent at Ruby's Lounge, another top-notch establishment with great staff. Steven and Erica in particular made us feel very welcome, and together with Linda, Chas and Vanessa, we will be staying in touch until our next visit.
I can't speak highly enough of some of the characters we encountered... 'looky looky cheapy cheapy' was still ringing in our ears for days after our return! But all were friendly, smiling and not pushy at all. Even the guys in Atlantic Foto were kind enough to let us use their computer on an almost daily basis to review our photos being taken, having smashed it's display screen on an excursion. Never got called 'Gringo' once... due to the frequency it appears on here, I thought i'd hear it a lot.
I thought Sosua was a town of great potential, though the constant 'verde' signs was a sad sight. Lots of beautiful buildings looking full of promise were in a delapitated state, either neglected or half built, hard to tell. It certainly didn't look rammed with tourists, Mondays and Tuesdays on the public beach were especially quiet. I sincerely hope this is only a direct result of the current economic climate and not a sign of the fickle tourist industry either moving across the island or on to a different island all together.
Maybe I could have bypassed all the above waffle and simply say; i'd be happy to return year after year until the day I die' eh?
When I got time I'll waffle on about the excursions we did.....
