El Valle Lodge - Monte Plata

Fantastic experience. what a wonderful and peaceful oasis carolina and santi have made. really fascinating how they turned a chaotic bus into a sweet water stream. my stay was initially januar and there are hardly mosquitoes because they spent years of hard work and consulted ecologists to make a moving stream and bring so much animal world. the way between the jungle huts are lush botanical gardens. I was amazed that the only creature that came into the bambus hut was a curious snail and the occasional eidechse or moskito. the food is ideal for clean eating, simple and tasteful, not excessively skillful and made with fresh local ingredients. the wine they serve is fantastic and very well selected, carolina makes fantastic cocktails and will make them even at the rainy days or during dinner in the lounge. the waiting staff is incredibly nice and accommodating. let them carolina know until midday that they are dinner in the night. if they are a animal, there are a few selected beach kitties and dogs hanging in the lounge / there area. I guess the badly taken were all chased away by carolinas. many animals for those who miss their pets. make sure their towels and wet clothes are dry in the sun on the beach before they return to the lodge, as the rooms are in the jungle and the wet air do not dry. a few tips in front of the arrival: the entry sign to the parking space is something hidden and can easily be overlooked. the entrance street is located next to a red and yellow bar/ery with a pool table, it has a huge sign with food pictures on it. the next atm is in the city samara so bring many pesos before it comes as there are no places that take cards. a wonderful big breakfast is included, but if you have a partner hanging up until midday, you can eat on the wonderful lunch half a mile away on the street in restaurant don piron, where you will find a beautiful couple serving the fresh delicious local Dominican fare (only kash). or they can have a piña colada and fresh Dominican dishes on the beach in claritza (only crooked) it is there most days before midday. she will set up a table for her, but be a little patient, as she then goes her order back to her kitchen to cook. it is worth the waiting time as when it returns, it is freshly caught seafood from this day and big rice and buzz. do not talk about the work loud in the lounge area, had some guests about a PowerPoint presentation and there was work thought to me. great place! definitely come back! for U.S. citizens I write this in the januar 2022 and they need a Covid test on the day before leaving, the next test area is in samana. we were unprepared and carolina could have someone test two of us on the lodge and cost about $100.

Beautiful and unique place close to nature. The breakfast and dinner with wine pairings were really good, also for a vegetarian – in a country where getting good food is rather difficult – we can also recommend the Chinola cocktail. We enjoyed the open design of the hotel. However, it failed us in the basics unfortunately. Our toilet flush didn’t work 2 out of 3 times and we had to resort to filling up a vase with water from the sink or going to the restaurant toilet. At some point the sink water didn’t drain anymore which got fixed luckily. Payment was difficult due to only accepting cash or PayPal (even for paying the accommodation) which has quite bad exchange rates. The wifi in our room didn’t work and as there isn’t any cell phone reception in El Valle, we had to go to the hotel restaurant to do all the planning for the day, where the internet also didn’t work anymore if too many people were there. Most importantly the communication with the hotel was really frustrating for us. We only speak limited spanish and there wasn’t any staff around that spoke english. That led to errors in our orders, not being able to recommend any hiking tours (we read in other reviews they could assist with that), not understanding the issues we had and making payment even more difficult. We asked to pay in the evening because we needed to leave early in the morning, the staff acknowledged that and told us that we could pay after dinner. But when we finished, there was no staff anymore. In the end we did in in the morning in a hurry and left the place in frustration. Without the communication issues we would have had an overall good time and could easily recommend this place.

The road is hell to get there (potholes, no markings, no lightning at night, tight turns, etc). When you finally get there, the parking space is unpaved in the middle of rocks and holes. Needless to say, your 4 wheel luggage will get stuck. You’ll then meet an armed guard outside of your cabin. The manager Maria was not very welcoming and seemed more concerned about discussing with her friends and doing her yoga workout than giving a warm welcome to new guests. This is a place where you pay top dollar and yet you don’t deserve more than single sheet toilet paper. The Wi-Fi coverage isn’t good either. They have several different networks with different access codes everywhere. In the restaurant area, the Wi-Fi router doesn’t handle the normal number of customers that use the space. The payment is also fishy. They don’t accept cards, they say you can pay via Revolut or PayPal but in reality they don’t have a Revolut account. They’ll send you the bank details to do a regular bank transfer. The beach is accessible in around 5 min of walking. Once there you’ll be harassed by locals trying to sell you things you don’t need. In a remote place like this, for the price to be justified, the whole environment, equipment and service should be outstanding. In reality, they are not. In short: overpriced, very difficult access, substandard environment, equipment and service.

MOST RUDE OWNER IN DR FOR A SO-SO PLACE. First of all, we wanted to stay at the Tree House which has much better rating, however it was fully booked so we went ahead and booked El Valle Lodge. Secondly, we never felt welcome in this place, few examples are; (1) we asked for a mosquito spray and the owner told us ‘we should have brought it from home’, (2) we wanted to pay by card (as there was never a place in Booking.com that they were accepting cash only) so not only we were forced to withdraw at an ATM but the owner laughed at us maybe not so funny when you are evading taxes?. Some more stuff we didn’t like; the owner was racists towards us, staff was treated by the lady that owns the place as 15th century slaves, my friend’s pillow had few stains which we wonder whether these were cleaned at all, the US$25 dinner we were never told it was a closed menu and vegetarian only (on top of that I am lactose allergic and the dessert was chocolate pudding), there was no Internet in the rooms, all the tours they offered were twice the price locals offer you at the beach, etc. I could go on and on, and this was only for a 1 night only… The summary is AVOID THIS PLACE AT ALL COSTS

Overpriced. we paid +300US$ for 1 night for the room including breakfast. all prices here are in US$. dinner was an additional 25US$ per person for a salad (nothing special) chicken soup dessert. not worth the long ride to come here. we were dissapointed overall with our stay.