Casa Marbella

Casa Marbella is a small bed and breakfast facility on the Tortuguero Village. We booked our stay through *******. Before our arrival, Casa Marbella sends detailed instruction on how to reach the public ferry dock, and a time table of the ferry. This helps us to correctly navigates to the ferry landing place. When we reach La Pavona (Embarcadero a Tortuguero), we were surprised to be greeted by a lady working for Casa Marbella, with our ferry tickets at hand. We had a good conversation with the lady when we were waiting for the ferry, and she explained in details of the tours operated by Casa Marbella. We ended up purchasing 3 tours from Casa Marbella: Night wildlife spotting & Jungle walk, the Tortuguero Canal tour, and the Night wildlife spotting & Jungle walk. We have spent more on the tour than our room, and we were pretty satisfied with the tour. The Casa Marbella sits beside the canal with a beautiful dock and dining area that faces the canal. The hotel room is very small and basic though. The plus side is that the room has a working air conditioning unit, which is very useful in the hot and humid Tortuguero weather. Some negative side is that the shower is heated by a small electric heater at the shower head, which frequently trips during the shower. So don’t be surprised if the shower suddenly turn cold, and you should try to turn back the switch that controls the shower heater outside your room. Casa Marbella offers coffee around 5am, to accommodate earlier riser for the morning canal tour. A continental breakfast is offered, with some fruit, coffee and orange juice, and the choice of either bread and scrambled egg or pancakes.

Basic but comfortable and clean room, with a large bathroom and a very pleasant balcony overlooking the canal. The morning tour in the canals is a must, a lot of wildlife spotting is guaranteed. We are very fond of wildlife so we had three tours (all the three mornings of our staying) instead of just one. The first two tours were perfect. In the morning of the third day we found out that they didn't take note of our booking of the tour. However in the end they somehow fixed the problem, so we only have positive memories of Casa Marbella and of its staff.

Nice, basic place for short term stay. Easy walk, 5 minutes from the main port with roller bags (they were not doing private pier drop off when I went). Staff is very responsive and helpful. It's right on the river so constant boat noise day and night, but this is outweighed by beautiful scenery and spectacular sunsets. The bathroom could have been cleaner - there were old soap pieces in the shower soap dish, the sink was gritty and I had no hot water despite following their written instructions.

A fabulous hotel that does exactly what is says - and a bit more! Having coffee and tea available on the terrace from 5.20am ahead of a 6am boat trip out was lovely and unexpected. The breakfast times are extended to take acount of early morning trips out which was great. A fridge was available on the terrace for all hotel users to use, which was great for putting a beer in, so it was ready ready when you came back from exploring! We used the tours arranged by the hotel and they were fabulous. Lewis, our guide was excellent and so knowledgeable. Plus the tours are great value and cheaper than others we looked at. All of the staff are lovely and we totally recommend Casa Marbella!