Decameron Barú - All Inclusive

“Beautiful Location! Some Considerations.”

Highlight: Outstanding location! The beach and grounds are beautiful. The bioluminiscent tour and the Rosario Island tours from the front desk were amazing! Pros: - Oceanfront room was lovely. Great views. - Generally good food, some really great meals. Especially lunch at the "Italian" restau… more

Highlight: Outstanding location! The beach and grounds are beautiful. The bioluminiscent tour and the Rosario Island tours from the front desk were amazing! Pros: - Oceanfront room was lovely. Great views. - Generally good food, some really great meals. Especially lunch at the "Italian" restaurant. (If you don't speak Spanish, you will not understand the menu - but the food will still be really good!) Cons: - A basic knowledge of Spanish would be very helpful at this location. Staff just does not know English. - It is a lengthy distance from the airport which adds time to airport transfers and excursions. - If you upgrade, you can have breakfast at the "Italian" restaurant, but they don't have a breakfast menu and you will be asked to "just order anything." This might be ideal, except the servers don't speak English. We found breakfast at the buffet to be quite varied, generally very tasty, and much easier to select. Considerations: - Upgrading was ideal for the room, but was not really worth it for the "premium alcohol." The only "premium" bar was at the "preferred" pool. If you do upgrade, consider having lunch at the "Italian" restaurant. It was wonderful. Also, they will provide you with additional bottled water if you request it at the front desk and persevere with your request. - When folks advise that you need to be up early (6:00 - 7:00 am) for beach chairs, it is entirely true. - The Spa was meh. Not sure I would choose that again. - The resort can be very loud. It seems to depend on the night. The entertainment seems to happen both at the main stage and in the lobby. If it is not in the lobby, the chairs on the deck are wonderful to looking at the stars in the dark night sky.

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“100/10!”

It's a beautiful place, but the staff was amazing and they all treat you like family. They made my time at the hotel just wonderful. El lugar es hermoso, pero la atención y el trato tan cálido de todo el staff (TODO el staff) hizo de mi estadía una experiencia maravillosa.

“Relax experience”

We came here for my brother’s wedding. The service was great. Marcos and Kali were great with us. They always tried to accommodate our group of over 20.

“Vacations are what you make it! Focus on the good and enjoy where you can!”

Overall we had a nice and relaxing vacation at Decameron Baru. Resort grounds: Large property and well maintained, lots of steps and walking but we liked it. Resort staff: Overall good service and friendly staff. As always some are more likeable and enjoyable than others. Most staff only have limit… more

Overall we had a nice and relaxing vacation at Decameron Baru. Resort grounds: Large property and well maintained, lots of steps and walking but we liked it. Resort staff: Overall good service and friendly staff. As always some are more likeable and enjoyable than others. Most staff only have limited English skills as well. Room: Spacious and clean, comfortable mattress and pillows, short on luggage racks and almost no closet space, all TV programs are in Spanish so we did not partake. No big deal! Restaurants; 1 Buffet, 3 a la cartes. The buffet was a large, open air restaurant but with netting to keep birds and other animals out. Reservations for the a la cartes had to be made the day of dining at the front lobby. It just required lining up and waiting to see the person taking the reservations. Food quality: Hate to say it but it was pretty bad. Colombian food is bland to begin with but the cooks at this resort could really do with some training. The pork was always dry and hard, the beef was tough and undercooked and the chicken was always slimy and undercooked. Each time I ate at the beach bar for lunch - I had to send the food back to request that it be cooked longer even though I asked for that in the first place. I did not see pepper the whole week we were there. We did find hot sauce but when others saw it they also used it and then it was done and they didn't have any more! Lastly I really expected the coffee experience to be better. We did have coffee at the lobby bar in the morning and it was a notch above the dismal coffee at the buffet. Beach: Private beach that was quite rocky - I am surprised they haven't cleared those rocks away. But being a private beach there was no worries leaving your bag on your chair while you swam. The water was nice and calm as well. There were some vendors off to the side of the beach and they did not pester you! It was really refreshing. There was a shortage of beach chairs and palapas so you had to be down at 6 am to get chairs and a palapa. If you arrived at 8-9 am you would get the last of the chairs but would have to struggle to get tree shade. There was a beach bar and a beach grill with tables and chairs with a limited menu. Upgrade: We took an upgrade package Standard Plus and it was hundreds extra. They claimed better food, room location, private pool and premium drinks. We were given gold bracelets and did not experience any value for the upgrade. We were placed on the third floor with a pool view while another couple we met who didn't upgrade had ground floor overlooking the garden and pool. There was absolutely no difference in food. On a few occasions we had breakfast at the Italian restaurant that converted to breakfast in the mornings. There was no menu and with limited English speaking waiters we had to guess what we could order. The food tasted the same as the buffet. The private pool was full of parents yelling at their kids half way across the pool while they laid in the sunchairs. And lastly we were served the same liquor as everyone else. The upgrade was a scam - don't bother.

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