Talamanca

Very basic, clean but many technical problems. Very noisy both outside and inside the hostel. Not highly recommended.

Terrible! Never again. Flood , no air conditioning and in the air conditioning was the mold , shower broken in all 3 rooms . Wafer-thin walls Incidentally, the location was top notch.

This accommodation is hit and miss so I aim to write a balanced and honest review to help others planning to book. The location and how central the property is allowed us to have a great time, you also get what you pay for with this accommodation. Obviously the Hostal is not staffed so you are required to do self-check-in. I had completed the check in form prior to arrival (to my knowledge), the form was not user friendly and continued to prompt for further information that I had already provided and glitched a lot. We arrived at the property (only approx 1 hour bus from airport) to find that there was no information in the lobby area to indicate what we do next (this also was not communicated by the property beforehand). At this stage we had no WiFi connection and my mobile data was not working due to being abroad. My phone was also having issues making outbound calls to an abroad number. Thankfully my partner’s phone allowed us to call the property. (Notably, we were only able to enter the property by chance because a previous guest left the door on the latch, if this hasn’t happened we would have been locked out with no passcode and WiFi still). We were given the information to check into the room thankfully over the phone after some panicking. The room itself is clean, basic and exactly what you need. There is a balcony and the facilities seemed fine. Unfortunately the room lacked information, we still did not have the WiFi code and also did not want to keep ringing to ask for information so we left this for a day or so. The AC was temperamental (after reading other reviews this seems to not be an accident). The AC would get turned off periodically during key hours in the day (most of the hours we were in the room the AC was manually turned off). We could hear someone toying with a switch board and would in turn switch the AC on and off. This would make it hard to relax and sleep. When I contacted the help desk they were very nonchalant about this and did not acknowledge that this is something they do intentionally to save money. When I referenced it was turned back on they said “good to know”… no apology or info about when AC is available for use. The walls are very thin, frankly if you want to sleep you need ear plugs and even then it does not 100% block out the noise. Not even the street noise but people talking in the neighbouring rooms, the walls are extremely thin. Lack of staff also means rowdy groups in the corridor. A couple of nights in we were woken up by shouting and banging. I had to get up at 5am to check out what was happening to then find the whole property was flooded including parts of our room. There were a group standing in the corridor chatting for ages in the early hours which really wasn’t ideal. The property did not acknowledge the flood at all, we still did not even get our room cleaned this whole time nor did we receive new towels until we asked a housekeeper (we only saw a housekeeper once who was only there to mop the corridors after the flood) . I’d have thought most accommodation providers would be quite mortified to put their guests in this situation. To not clean and provide fresh towels after such an incident is quite shocking to me. Naturally our room was very sandy and not clean after days spent at the beach and no cleaning in the room. There was only one bin in the bathroom too which quickly gets full with water bottles etc. The room lacked any information, including WiFi which we found surprising considering there were no staff on site to help. I will admit the staff were helpful when they answered the phone but there were times they did not answer and with lack of WiFi password I would worry for anyone elderly or if anyone needed anything urgently. Our water was also cut off 30 mins before check out when my partner was showering. I’d like to think this is coincidence but based on the integrity of the rest of the service and the sanctions on the AC usage, it’s not clear. I also feel this likely led to the flood. I think someone’s water was cut off mid-shower and perhaps turned back on after they left, thus flooding the building. On the face of it the room is okay but only very a very short stay, however if you intend to stay longer than 3 nights, value sleep and cleanliness it’s probably not for you.