El Valle Lodge

Fantastic experience. What a wonderful and peaceful oasis Carolina and Santi have made. Really fascinating how they turned a chaotic bus into a freshwater stream. My stay was in early January and there are hardly mosquitoes because they spent years of hard work and ecologists consulted to make a moving stream and bring so much wildlife. The paths between the jungle huts are lush botanical gardens. I was amazed that the only creature that came into the bamboo hut was a curious snail and the occasional lizard or mosquito. The food is great for clean food, simple and tasteful, not excessively seasoned and made with fresh local ingredients. The wine they serve is fantastic and very well chosen, Carolina makes fantastic cocktails and will also make you in the rainy days or during dinner in the lounge. The waiting staff is incredibly nice and accommodating. Let Carolina know by noon that you have dinner at night. If you are an animal, there are a few selected beach kitties and dogs hanging in the lounge/dining area. I guess the bad behavior was all chased away from Carolina's broom. Many animals for those who miss their pets. Make sure your towels and wet clothes are dry in the sun on the beach before returning to the lodge, as the rooms are in the jungle and the wet air do not dry. A few tips before arrival: The entrance sign to the parking lot is hidden and can easily be missed. The entrance street is located next to a red and yellow bar/ery with a pool table, it has a huge sign with food pictures on it. The next ATM is in the city of Samara so bring many pesos before there are no places that take cards. A wonderful big breakfast is included, but if you have a partner suspended until noon, you can eat half a mile away on the street in the Don Piron restaurant, where you will find a beautiful couple serving the fresh delicious local Dominican fare (only cash). Or you can enjoy a Piña Colada and fresh Dominican dishes on the beach in Claritza (only dishes) It is there most days before noon. She will set up a table for you, but be a little patient as she will then cook your order back to her kitchen. It is worth waiting as if it returns fresh caught seafood from this day and large rice and beans. Do not talk about the work loud in the lounge area, had some guests about a PowerPoint presentation and there was work thoughts. Great place! Come back! For US citizens I write this in January 2022 and you need a Covid test on the day before leaving, the next test area is in Samana. We were unprepared and Carolina was able to test someone two of us at the lodge and cost about $100.

Beautiful hotel and setting. Access to a private beach was great. However the prices for the dinner at the hotel and the excursions are expensive. We decided to have dinner at outside restuarants during our stay because we could get a decent meal for 2 at half the price of the hotel dinner.

El Valle Lodge's rooms were beautiful (no air conditioning but that is the vibe of the hotel), and located 5 mins walk from one of the best beaches in Dominican Republic. The staff were really nice as well. However the add ons like dinner and drinks in the restaurant, or the excursions, were quite expensive. I would recommend going to one of the local restaurants instead for more authentic food for a much better price.

Great place but the staff could do better. Nobody will ask you if you want a drink or id you need anything else when you are in the restaurant. They will also make a lot of noise (laughing really hard) when there are customers there. Not very professional

Beautiful and unique place close to nature. The breakfast and dinner with wine pairings were really good, also for a vegetarian – in a country where getting good food is rather difficult – we can also recommend the Chinola cocktail. We enjoyed the open design of the hotel. However, it failed us in the basics unfortunately. Our toilet flush didn’t work 2 out of 3 times and we had to resort to filling up a vase with water from the sink or going to the restaurant toilet. At some point the sink water didn’t drain anymore which got fixed luckily. Payment was difficult due to only accepting cash or PayPal (even for paying the accommodation) which has quite bad exchange rates. The wifi in our room didn’t work and as there isn’t any cell phone reception in El Valle, we had to go to the hotel restaurant to do all the planning for the day, where the internet also didn’t work anymore if too many people were there. Most importantly the communication with the hotel was really frustrating for us. We only speak limited spanish and there wasn’t any staff around that spoke english. That led to errors in our orders, not being able to recommend any hiking tours (we read in other reviews they could assist with that), not understanding the issues we had and making payment even more difficult. We asked to pay in the evening because we needed to leave early in the morning, the staff acknowledged that and told us that we could pay after dinner. But when we finished, there was no staff anymore. In the end we did in in the morning in a hurry and left the place in frustration. Without the communication issues we would have had an overall good time and could easily recommend this place.