We stayed at the Villas De Palermo and while we really enjoyed it, I'm not sure I would recommend it to other people, at least not at the full price. See, we bought a Living Social deal where we got 4 nights stay, daily breakfast, one dinner and 4 activities all included. Looking at the regular prices on their website, I'm not sure it would be worth the money. However, I thought our package was a great value.
The Villas De Palermo is a group of villas. From what I could tell, they were all nearly identical 4-person (2 bedroom) villas, although there website seems to list some other options. For some reason, our living social deal was for 2-poeple even though we were in the 4-person villas, so we had a lot of extra space and on certain nights (if Mike was snoring a lot, for example), we'd even sleep in separate rooms.
Pluses:
- Large, nice villas that can house 4-5 people, so good for group trips
- Beautiful views from the balconies of the villas (see above) and from the dining area/pool
- Staff does their best to be helpful (although many of them don't speak much English so if you don't speak Spanish, there will be a significant language barrier to overcome).
- A shuttle between the villa and town during daytime hours.
- Food was generally very good.
- Some of the villas are quite a hike up a very steep hill and are pretty far away from the front desk/restaurant/pool. Our villa happened to be one of the closest, which was convenient. I'm sure the villas higher up have even nicer views, but I'm glad we didn't have to hike those hills every day. That distance from the front desk brings me to the next and possibly biggest problem:
- There are no phones in the villas. I had read this in a few reviews too, so I was sort of prepared for that, and I would say this is definitely the biggest flaw. They say they're trying to be environmentally friendly but I honestly think maybe they were just too cheap to put in phone lines. At the very least they should have some kind of internet phone then or provide pre-paid cell phones for the guests. What if someone was sick or if there was an emergency? Or if you just have a question, it's a huge pain to walk all the way down to the front desk if you're in a villa that's not so close.
- It's not right in town (it's about 3km away) and the shuttle isn't particularly dependable - plus it stops running at 6pm and you usually have to take cabs home no matter what time unless you can coordinate with the shuttle for them to pick you up at a certain time in a certain place. We probably spent more money on cabs than just about everything else. I suppose we could've walked some of the time (though not after dark) but even the lowest villas are a fair amount of the way up a pretty steep hill and frankly parts of the road between town and the villas are a little sketchy.
- The windows rattle like CRAZY. I think it was windier while we were there than it is most of the rest of the year. But the windows are sort of loosely sitting in their tracks and the wood on wood banging got really loud at times. I kept trying to stuff rolled up pieces of paper in the gaps but that didn't always work and sometimes the maids (or my boyfriend) would take them out. I'm a light sleeper and this was a huge problem for me - sometimes it was so loud that I think even heavy sleepers would've been disturbed.
- Bugs: wear shoes/flip flops/slippers because there are ants and some of them looked like they had stingers. Also, most of the windows don't have screens so, inevitably, many bugs will get in. Not that's it's unbearable or anything, just be aware and shake out your clothes and stuff before putting them on. We also had a lizard in the villa at one point (in fact, it may still be there because it disappeared but we're not sure where to).
The villas have free wi-fi, but that never worked all that well for us. We could usually check our email and send emails, but it would be really slow. And I kept trying to upload trip photos to various sites and FORGET IT. No matter what I tried, I could never get that to work.
To book all of our activities, we went through the concierge who (when we were there) was an American ex-pat named Brooke. She took pretty good care of us but the biggest problem was that she seemed like she was never on the property so if I had questions I had to have the front desk call her (felt really bad about that) or I had to try to communicate with her via email which wasn't always so successful, partially because of the internet situation and partially because I think she just wasn't checking it all that frequently. Nonetheless she was REALLY nice and took good care of us, but it was just another thing that was a little more difficult than it would be in a more developed country.
Brooke and the guy who took us surfing, Tim, also run an annual music festival in early February that sounds pretty awesome. We didn't get to go but from what she was telling us, it's grown quite large. It's called Pitaya Fest and there are lots of activities in the days leading up to the festival, as well as about a day and a half of music (some of which takes place at the Villas I believe), comprised mostly of Nicaraguan and Central American bands.
Overall, I really enjoyed my stay at the Villas and at our discounted price, it was a great deal. I just don't think I can recommend it at the full price to anyone. However, if you're looking to do the expat thing and you like to surf, buying a villa or a share in a villa might not be a bad idea for you.
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