I have very mixed feelings about this hotel.

First. My girlfriend and I decided to go to PV last winter, and wanted to go for an extended stay, our last vacation was 6 days, so we decided on 10 days. Neither one of us are rich by any means so for a 10 day stay, we couldnt really afford a super nice hotel.

I checked this site and found this hotel. From reading the reviews you see anything from great to horrible. I figured it was somewhere in the middle and booked it on expedia.

We booked the Jr Suite Deluxe, one step down from the Master Suite and one above the Jr SUite kitchenette. We arrived and were promptly checked in. A baggage person brought our bags up to our room, 3rd floor. Yes, no elevators, but Im 29 and in ok shape, so its not a big deal. If youre older and cant walk up three flights of stairs, dont stay here.

First bad thing. The description on EXPEDIA IS A LIE!!!! There was no AC in our unit. I figured all of the deluxe units would be the same, I found out that is very untrue. I think every single room is different, some have balconies, some dont, like ours, some have AC, some dont, like ours. Etc. Thus, if you get a room with what it has, great, but if you dont, watch out. The virtual tour is bull too.

Here is where the problems really started though. The next day we got up, did the pool thing(which is like the pics, very nice area) and came back to rest a bit after being in the sun for a few hours, and in the bedroom, all along the wall by our beds where your head is, there was a line of ANTS!!! 100s of them all along the wall. They were coming from a window in the room that didnt shut all of the way.

We went to the gigante down the street, VERY CONVIENIENT LOCATION, and bought some raid. I figured if I doused the window and the wall, it would be ok. I did so, and everything was fine that night after coming back from dinner and such. The next morning we woke up to a wall full of ANTS!! again! THis time there were even more! Gross!

Im not one who is going to go to the front desk and whine about every single little thing wrong with the place, as Ive read here, but I think this warranted a discussion with the front desk. However, I waited til the next night after again spraying the room and wall and window with Raid. Went to dinner the next night, Night 3, came back and it was unbearable, all over all of the walls, it was amazing. Id never seen anything like it. Then a couple of little lizards ran across the floor, and my girlfriend had had it. I called the front desk, at 10pm no less, and they actually moved us to another room. However, it was one downgrade to the Kitchenette, not the full kitchen.

However, that room was great. IT had an AC,mini fride, sink, coffee maker, cupboards, the description on expedia says two bathrooms, LOL, umm NOT!!

It also had a little living room, as had the other place, with some hard uncomfortable couches, which we never used. The bathroom was much cleaner, and NO WINDOWS in the wall to alllow ants. The rest of our stay in that room was cool. TV worked fine, got a few english channels that showed AMerican movies, rest in spanish, which I dont speak.

Like I said, its hit or miss with this hotel. If you get a great room, the price makes it very worth it, but if you dont, You will HATE your vacation.

On to the rest of the place. The location is ok. No restaurants within walking distance, that kinda sucked. Bus ride downtown is only 4.5 pesos, which is like 50 cents, and is only 10 mins, so thats pretty cool, you just walk to the front of the place, cross the street and they come every few mins usually. Or you can take a taxi for about 5 bucks, again, not too bad IMO.

The Pool area again was very nice, however when we were there, there were quite a few others and they lack enough chairs IMO. We had to skip a day or two at the pool as a result.

You might have read about the "timeshare" lady at the front desk area. ANNOYING!! She kept asking us to come to breakfast presentation at the restaurant, etc. As someone said, you find yourself sneaking past the front desk area, as its very open aired, hoping she doesnt see you. We finally gave in and said we'd go after being there a few days, and then she asked if we had a credit card. We did, but I LIED, knowing that if we didnt have a CC they didnt want us there anyways. So, if youre in PV and get hasseled for a Timeshare, tell them you dont have a credit card. They will leave you alone.

The restaurant sucks. No offense, the food isnt very good, the coffee is terrible. We ate lunch there once and breakfast once and hated it both times. Dont waste your time eating at hotels in PV, there are tons of EXCELLENT restaurants dowtown that serve all sorts of foods.

PV on a whole is excellent. We loved it. Very friendly people, lots of places to eat, excellent scenery, not too crowded. Only complaint are the timeshare people downtown constantly bothering you, you just ignore them, but it gets annoying bigtime when you walk past them alot. The "malecon" downtown is the place to be. Lots of bars, restuarants and clubs. Also go to the old town across the river. Best place for breakfast is Freddie Tucans in Old Town. Nice guy, plenty of space, good food. Not expensive.

If youre a vodka drinker, better have the cash available. 7 dollars a shot!!! I drink Vodka on the rocks, so a double on the rocks was 14 freaking dollars everywhere. Beer is cheap though.

Overall it was a fun time, once we got into a room that was nicer, yet we paid for the better version supposedly. I didnt bother asking for a refund as once you ask for something out of the norm, they all of a sudden cant understand english very well.

As stated, if youre thinking about this hotel, its hit or miss. Id almost suggest Jr Kitchenette instead of the Jr. Suite. w/ full kitchen. Again, the pics on expedia arent what we stayed in originally. There was no TV in an entertainment center in the living room, so hanging out in the living room was pretty pointless when youre trying to relax and just watch the tube.

If youre looking for a quiet place though, and a cheap place, if there arent any ANTS all over the room, its worth it. Although, when I come back, which I am, Im staying more towards downtown or Old PV, as thats right where the action is.

I guess overall, I cannot recommend this place, unless youre really cheap or if you feel you might get lucky with a tolerable unit. Good luck if you do...

Im open to emails with questions too about anything Puerto Vallarta I might be able to aide in...

Jason

My daughter & I shared a room for a week in Feb/06 at this little oasis amidst the hustle & bustle of the huge hotels. The rooms were clean, cool & quiet with no worry of leaving the patio doors open day or night. The pool was very clean & the surrounding beautiful lawns & gardens were immaculate. The little resturant had nice light meals & would bring it to you at poolside if you asked. There was a huge grocery store 2 blocks away (kind of like Wall Mart) The bus stop was a half block where you could go anywhere in the city for 45 pesos. Walking downtown took approx. an hour and it was safe to do so. Access to the beach was just across the road & thru a hotel, but returning to the Puerto de Luna really was an oasis.

I booked this hotel via Expedia for a wedding that my husband, my in-laws, and I were to stay at. It was NOTHING like I expected. The amenities that they list for this hotel are non-existent. We were not impressed what so ever. The first night we were there, we had a gas leak from our stove. They did fix it, though. The entire first night we were there the fridge made this terrible noise. We told the front desk about it, but it was never fixed. We ended up unplugging it during the night. Also, bring your own pillow!!! The pillows were washed several times and were as hard as rocks!! The grounds facing the pool are very nice, but our balcony looked out onto a dirt lot. We also did not have a working television the entire time. We also had no phone, in order to have phone service, we were told to pay $20. Yes, it was cheap and cheap it was!!! I would not recommend this place to anyone!!

The hotel grounds and landscaping were as pretty as the pictures on the hotel and travel websites. The pool area was clean and well maintained. By staying at the hotel, we did have ready access to the beach, about two blocks away, via another hotel where there were arrangements made to allow Punta De Luna clientele to use the beach and chairs. The downtown was easily accessible by four and a half peso, blue and white buses Since it was slow season when we went just before the holidays in December, the hotel restaurant did not seem to have customers and we did not go there. Maid service was excellent, and the staff at the front desk was normally very helpful even if the English was sometimes hard to understand. The rooms seemed to be in line with the two and a half stars ratings seen on travel websites, but they were not quite as good as the pictures seemed to suggest, which is fairly typical of most hotels. Buildings in the hotel complex are 4 stories high and lacking elevators. We were given a room on the 4th floor. Since I had a bad knee, I asked for and received a different room on the lower level without any problem. Pictures of the hotel showed a lot of balconies and one might falsely assume that most of the rooms had balconies. It turned out that the balconies were only for the bigger rooms, which was a little bit of a disappointment since we really like to use balconies and did not have one. One other negative thing about the hotel was the minute we were checked in we were directed to a table to be signed up for what presumably was a time share presentation. The presentation, however, was called a “hotel grand opening” rather than a time share. By going to the presentation, one would be allowed to buy excursion tickets for half price. While we did sign up reluctantly for the presentation, we never went to it. Sometimes, we found ourselves walking quickly past the front desk area to avoid the “grand opening” people who appeared in the afternoon. Another little problem was that the hotel electric sockets only take two prongs rather than three. We like to drink tea in the morning and evening and had taken a three-prong kettle with us for this purpose. In the end, we bought an extension cord at a local store to make our three-prong kettle work.

One of the reasons that I picked the hotel off the website was its proximity to a shopping area. About two blocks away, there is a Gigante store that is similar to a super Walmart, which seems to be patronized mostly by locals. The store takes dollars as well as pesos. On our first evening in PV, we went there to buy food and found wonderful pastries for the next day’s breakfast. Unfortunately, we could not figure out the procedure for buying such goodies since no one else was buying them at the moment. A store manager came by and asked if we needed help. I explained our problem and the manager pointed out that we needed to get trays for the pastries and take them to the pastry counter where a price tag would be added to the bag. That was all fine and dandy, but next came a timeshare pitch for units in new PV. Being tired and not wanting to hear such a pitch, I essentially walked away. The manager offered my wife four free, rather than discounted excursion tickets, and even offered to pay for our groceries if we went to the presentation. We asked if it was a timeshare and received kind of an evasive answer about how they just wanted to show the place and “you can tell all your friends about it.” In the end, I had not heard the offer for free tickets and declined. After thinking it over for a few days, we did return to the store several times with the idea of possibly going to this presentation, but never ran into the manager again. In the end, I am glad that we did not go the timeshare route since we were able to do several excursions without spending the big bucks associated with them.

One trip that we made was for whale watching at Punta de Mita, which is on the north end of the bay. One can catch a blue and white bus by the hotel and go north to Walmart on the main street. About 50 yards past the blue and white bus stop is the place to catch a bus for Punta de Mita. Cost for the ride, one way, was 20 pesos (several dollars) each. The ride is about an hour long and leaves one by the restaurant row. When walking through a restaurant to the beach, we were approached by people offering boat rides to see the whales for $25 each. By going to the left as one approaches the beach, one walks past other restaurants, and eventually gets to the point where boats are anchored or tied up. Here, we found a tall Austrian boat owner, who offered to take both of us out for 400 pesos total (about 18 dollars each). The offer was also special since we were guaranteed to see whales or there would be no charge. We did see whales and they put on quite a show with a lot of tail splashing and bubbly water that was really the highlight of our trip in many ways. After seeing the whales, we had lunch at the Manana restaurant. The fish was prepared with an almond sauce and was the best fish that we had during the week. When it is not the whale watching months, the same boats will take people to the nearby islands for inexpensive snorkeling. The only negative thing about going to Punta de Mita, is that in making a visit there, blood banks may not accept donations from such visitors. When back in the United States, I was told that I would not be able to donate blood for a year after visiting the town because there had been a malaria problem at one time—something that was a great surprise since there was no evidence of such a problem.

Another excursion we took was to Yelapa. The inexpensive way to do it is to take a blue and white bus to old town. From there, catch a green bus that says Mismaloya to Boca, which is past Mismaloya and apparently the last stop. The green buses are 5 pesos each, while the blue and whites are 4 and a half pesos each. If one does not have the exact change, it was not unusual to get back one less peso. We started calling this the gringo tax. At Boca, one walks down to the harbor and then can catch a round-trip water taxi to Yelapa for 120 pesos (about 11 dollars ) each. In Yelapa, one can walk along the beach where the restaurants are to the small town and then up to the waterfall, which is a main attraction. Some of the people going to the waterfall were on horses, but it is not a difficult walk so the horses are really not necessary unless one simply wants to have the added experience. While in Yelapa, one of the catamaran boats from one of the regular PV excursions appeared. There was no place to dock and people had to unload from the larger vessel into small boats to get to shore. It seemed like it took an hour to load or unload these bigger excursion boats—something that was unnecessary with the water taxis. We had a fish lunch at one of the numerous restaurants on the Yelapa shores and then later relaxed on the beach.

In general, it is possible for the budget traveler to stay at a place like Puerto De Luna, have a wonderful time, and take in the major attractions with little difficulty.