"We went to Lava Hotel early October. Weather was lovely – high 20’s most of the time.
First impression. The photos online make the hotel look small and dinky – big mistake – the place is huge. That does not mean it is swarming with people, just the opposite.
The hotel is like a very modern art gallery. The reception area is voluminous and everywhere looks far to walk and spacey. No clutter. You could have a ball with an orchestra in it !
Then the walk to your room depending on where you are. Lovely wide, pristine, uncluttered corridors that would take a small car easily. No scraping past other folk with your luggage.
Rooms lovely too and quiet (with qualification). The first night it was so quiet, we listened for a door shutting, a TV next door, footsteps, a car going by, a plane overhead, anything: not a sound: it was as if we had transported to the Twilight Zone.
For the most part, as it transpired, guests seemed to stay by the pool, on their balconies (as far as we could tell, every room had one) or out dining, or dining in the restaurants. One could frequently walk down the many long passages and not see a sign of life. Indeed, no need to go for a brisk walk on the promenade – going around, up down the angular staircases, through the grounds would be a good workout any day. The promenade outside the hotel is fantastic….no cars - loads of space and with a dedicated track for all sorts of bikes, trikes, four-wheeled pedalos, scooters large and small, both leg-powered or electric. All abilities catered for, right at ones door. No rowdiness.
Just joggers and serious walkers apart from all those just enjoying the relaxed space to wander along.
Food. We had the breakfast option and the variety and quality is just superb. Any and all tastes catered to.
Outside and opposite the south side of the hotel, there is a good sandy beach, easy to swim off and when we were there loads of space. Access is via a gate into the property using your room swipe key. But the beach is not exclusive for the hotel….there is plenty of space right along, but it is better than the Carmen beach which is very shallow, shelving so gently that one has to walk out far to get to any depth, whereas the beach in front of the hotel is a perfect slope.
The main pool however in the hotel appears more as a focal point where guests sunbathe – it not huge and was not heavily used….. plenty of space there and if one wanted to compare with another large hotel at Matagorda the pool area of that hotel was a huge sea of blue sun loungers all looking very cramped by comparison. Basically if one wants a sedate and calm holiday experience this is the place for you.
Now comes the funny part.
In the room we had, there was no “how-to” manual of this-and-that and what phone numbers for what.
We were shown how to use the room safe, but replicating it was baffling even reading the instruction card. Turns out that one has be very certain, when locking it after putting in your code, that you turn the knob FULL anti-clockwise. Otherwise it won’t lock. Took us a while to figure what the problem was. Then, went to put our laptop in: surprise. The safe is too small (and our laptop is deliberately a small one). Ipad size only.
Next “problem”. Cup of tea time. We always bring our own tea-bags. There is a kettle and coffee maker.
A couple of small bottles of water supplied. The hotel tap water is heavily chlorinated so not very good for tea, therefore, what was essentially bottled drinking-water had to be used for the tea. Thereafter we brought our own drinking-water, bought from outside. Next surprise. The drawer with the coffee etc. capsules had 4 CREAM capsules. No milk ones. Used in the tea reluctantly. When we spoke to someone on a room service trolley they said they didn’t have them (milk capsules). A note said that replacing capsules had to be done via reception – a long walk. Very odd. Then at breakfast we asked if could take some milk to the room – not allowed. Health and Safety. So no fresh milk available, which we thought was the norm, as in other hotels of similar standing, there was normally a milk carton in the fridge. Come prepared, or again, buy in when you first pop out of the hotel. Handy mini-market right next door. Reminiscent of the joke where a guest in a smart restaurant asks for a coffee, without cream. Waiter then returns and says, “ I am sorry, we have no cream, will you have your coffee without milk ?”
Air conditioning. Has a life of its own. No instructions….and it never seemed to do what we tried to make it do. As it was, we coped as the temperature was more or less OK for us, and if it felt a bit chilly, we opened the patio door to let the heat come in. We never found out how to stop it completely. Sometimes we thought we had managed and then it started up later of its own accord !
Noise. Suddenly, as other people have noted, lots of scraping, grinding etc. from adjacent rooms.
It turns out that this is the sound of the chairs and beds in the room and the metal furniture on the balcony, being moved around as the room attendants clean around. It echos badly. There appear to be no gliders on the furniture – meaning - that they are grating as they are moved (quite good quality and therefore heavy). Tiled floors. It must be heavy and awkward for the people who service the rooms.
Bathroom.
This has been commented on before ie about the floor to roof glass panel between the bedroom and the bathroom, causing privacy issues for some. Elsewhere the management responded saying that a curtain was available if asked for, but given the absence of that snippet of information in the room and no obvious ways to hang something, one would, at first blush, think that this was the way it had to be.
We quite liked it as it threw some natural light into the bathroom. But surely when the hotel was being designed, the penny would have dropped that some folks would not like this. And if they thought it was a great idea, they could have frosted the panel, entirely, or up to head-height. However if one was watching, avidly, the latest Attenborough, or Coronation Street, one has a straight sight-line from the toilet seat to the room TV.
More prosaically, if one is bothered, all one has to do is run the shower on hot for a minute and the whole thing steams up.
Sink. Try screwing the plug into place. It does not work. It is designed this way, to “save” water ie one keeps the tap running slowly and then it runs right out. The plug is more to facilitate cleaning hair or other debris that might cause a blockage. So what does one do if one wants to follow David Beckham’s advice to use “the best a man can get” razor, wet-shaving. It is hard to do this without a sink of water to dip the razor into to clear it. What to do ? Well Becks, we think, would be proud of us persevering to find a solution. Method. Unscrew the ceramic plug. Place folded face flannel over hole. Invert plug, insert and this creates nearly perfect seal. However, as we had a Roger&Gallet soap dish, the inverted base into the hole with flannel in place created a perfect seal – no loss. Failing that, bring a jam jar lid exactly 75 mm outer dia. :) However, as to saving water, using the running water method (not sure of how that works), it would have filled the sink x 4 times…..timed to complete shaving routine. So no saving there.
PS no flannels supplied, unusually, but we had our own.
Going back to the curious window in the wall: - as mentioned, it had a sight-line direct to the TV. (There is a door of course -a large frosted door which is elegant and possibly the same material that could have been used in the hole-in-the-wall window).
On the wall in the toilet there was another inexplicable remote-looking gadget. So we wondered was it 1. A TV repeater remote control 2. A Riser – recliner toilet control 3. An Ejector Seat control 4 A Flush timer control 5. An Emergency Services call alarm (as it had a red button). ? Somehow we managed without touching it !
Curiouser and curiouser. The bathroom door has a latch button on the inside. Why, if one can see into the bathroom via the large window, would one bother locking the bathroom door ? Seemed counter-intuitive. We tried it and, oddly, it would not lock. The design has a claw on it so if it has been shut hard, with the claw already in the locked position, then the claw could be bashed a bit out of line and end up not being able to get over the retaining bar. We didn’t attempt to see if it would lock with a firm push in case we got locked in !
Finally, going back to the swimming pool…..no inflatables allowed apart from flotation aids. One might have thought an air-bed was a form of “flotation-aid” - although we know what was meant.
Health and Safety was cited also. But also more likely that, with a near constant (warm) breeze and occasional gusts, the spectacle of inflatables taking off over the heads of the sun-bathers would have been a bit discombobulating. However the hotel has a cunning defence strategy to deal with the isolated escapee. All round the hotel there are (beautiful) gardens of cacti of every variety, large and small. So they would catch both the low flying and the high-flying escaping inflatables, taking no prisoners. Then the Health and Safety aspect would surely come into play if some unfortunate employee had to scale the cacti trees and scrape off the tattered remains of some beach ball while a little child bawls disconcertingly below.
Well we just are having some fun. When we chose this hotel from a short list we made, the clincher had to do with the fact that we took the number of lowest scores (One * and Two **s) and divided it into the total number of reviews. The score was twice as good as the next best hotel that we could locate and that means a lot. The best by a country mile. In other words you will have a great time in this hotel from lots of angles…..just ask how little things work as you check-in ! It is full of little surprises.
Lastly, dining away from the hotel. Way above the other local eateries, is the Sabor Lebanese Restaurant in the shopping centre along the promenade (in the direction of the airport). Lovely tasting, unusual, perfect presentation, wide range and surprisingly inexpensive. Quite the best we had. It is very new and does not even have a review page anywhere yet that we have found, but you can go there safely and not be disappointed. Enjoy your stay."
