Name: Hacienda Amarilla Del Mar
Address: Playa Gigante, Rivas, Rivas, Rivas, 10000, Nicaragua
Rating: 9

Air conditioning

Smoking areas

Smoke-free property

Terrace

Private check-in/check-out

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Non-smoking rooms

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Rooms

Bottled water

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Free Wi-Fi

Internet

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Transfer

Spanish

English

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Hiking

Fishing

Sun Deck

Recreation

Free parking

Parking

Next to the beach

Pool and beach

Snorkelling

Sports

Pets Not Allowed

Pets

Location

At the hotel

Hacienda Amarilla Del Mar

In Dec-April, it's pretty hot here although the water is cool. Having a/c is at times amazing! 

We ended up booking a house before we got to Gigante, so we didn't stay here, but I wished we had. Power sometimes goes out in the town. While we were here, there were multiple outages. One lasting over night, one 24hrs, others were shorter.  It's a huge bonus that this hotel has it's own generator. That's a rarety here ana woulda have been great at the house we stayed in. The hotel rooms are charming and tidy. The breeze and view from the top floor are incredible. The location is very convenient.

From the pickup at the airport to the drop off at our ferry, this quaint hotel exceeded every expectation in the book. Amazing, friendly staff that is eager to please. You must try the pancakes with the free breakfast! Absolutely make sure to catch the sunset at the rooftop bar, and just up the hill on the other side of the rocks you will find the most amazing, and isolated beach. We spent the entire day there and not a single other person on the beach. This hotel was amazing. We enjoyed every minute here! We cannot wait to go back!

Regardless of a couple of bad reviews that I recommend you totally ignore, I highly recommend this place. Location: A+!, staff friendly: A+, breakfast: A.
Very comfortable room. 
Take time to chat with Don, the owner. He is a former journalist who has a fascinating history. 
A great beach for swimming. Pelicans and frigate birds. A nice wooded area to the south of the beach where we saw puff birds, Orioles, a variegated squirrel and over a dozen howler monkeys. 
Go. Stay. Enjoy. 

Rivas

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Beautiful Spanish style hotel with a/c

Absolutely Amazing

Nice!!!

It’s been a couple months since our visit to Hacienda Amarilla and unfortunately upon reflection our experience only gets worse, not better.

We went to Playa Gigante for New Years Eve 2018 as a quick mid-range luxury retreat. We came to Hacienda Amarilla via American Express Travel and were wooed by the photos and beach. While my boyfriend and I speak proficient Spanish we weren’t expecting to rely so heavily on it in the hotel. However since the owner, Don (who many other guests raves about) was away in California, the hotel was being run by the Nicaraguan family that typically cares for the grounds and a couple who were filling in for managing the hacienda. The family, while very nice didn’t speak any English and never cleaned our room the duration of the stay. We’ll get to why that was a problem later. The managers who were temporarily watching over the grounds were pretty bad. They wouldn’t have anything to do with the guests (in fact, when we checked in I introduced myself to the woman who refused to speak (although she appeared to be from the states and spoke perfect English) and gave me a terse smile. For the remainder of the trip to Playa we saw her frequently but noticed spent most of our visit blatantly avoiding us- including when we saw her on the roof deck on her phone, when we saw her in town, and when we saw her solo at the Hostel rave on NYE. Note she didn’t acknowledge us, try to make small talk, or even say hello. What was surprising was she was very good about email- we used many of her suggestions to help plan this trip. 

Her partner, a male, was better- throughout our visit we’d see him alone occasionally and he’d say hi.

It’s incredible how much the owners or in this case the managers of a location can make a trip pleasantly memorable— or the reverse. In this case we found it impossible to ever speak to them, get recommendations on what we should do or try in Playa, or even basics— like how do we stop the roach infestation in our room (the ‘California’).

I’ll stop to say the hotel is located on the most amazing beach— you fall asleep hearing waves crashing, can sit out on the chairs in front and watch the pristine waves lap in, or scramble over the rocks to the amazing surfing beach next door. But be aware— on a major holiday such as New Years this beach turns in to a locals haven for bacchanalia. For 3 days solid the locals soiled the beach with litter and remnants from their camps, and the town went from sleepy and serene to an overcrowded, loud, and filthy couple of blocks.

Back to the hotel. The decor (kind of a día de Los muertos theme) is very well done and lovely. The in room ACs are fantastic. However the entire time we were there our bathroom reeked of sewage and we would fall asleep to cockroaches falling on us. I tried to explain this to the Nicaraguan family watching over the place but my ability to do so in Spanish was limited (haya muchos cockroaches) and met with a blank stare. If they had ever cleaned our room they may have seen the smashed cockroaches on the floor or the wall. 

Overall we were relieved to get in Eddie’s car to Isla de Ometepe (who is the best driver ever— we retained him for the entirety of our trip to Nicaragua and found him to be a highlight of our trip. So thanks to Lori (the hotel guest Manager who was again, great on email) for connecting us.

Amazing location. Everything else could use work.

I first visited the location November 2016, my husband and I decided it would be a great place to have our get a way wedding. After talking with the manager who seemed eager and delighted with the idea of a wedding at their location we began all the work that takes with planning a wedding. We loved this place due to the rooftop which we were assured we could use for our 100-150 person wedding.

 The troubles started when my event planner who is a big planner out of San Juan Del Sur came to visit the location with the flower person. They spoke to the owner Don who had no idea about our wedding...after talking to him on the phone he suddenly remembered about our November wedding but informed me that there was no way possible to have the wedding on the rooftop. That there could never be more than 60 people on the rooftop at once. Big problem, we already had sent out invitations and about 90 RSVP's so my event planner started working on plan B. This was right in front of the owner and with me on the phone. (being that I live in the states) the new plan was to have the entire thing right on the beach. At the time the beach was nice and  big, with plenty of room and with jaw dropping sunsets. No problem, moved onto plan B.

Plan B required a lot more things to rent, which we added to our budget, things like satellite bars, stage for the band since it was on the sand, a dance floor, etc. All of this was communicated to management and Don via email. The entire wedding would take place on the sand. 

Things changed when about a month before the wedding a hurricane came thru and caused a lot of damage to the pacific coast of Nicaragua. Not even two days after the hurricane the venue started contacting me about the full deposit being needed asap. They wanted me to send it right away, I was in Canada at the time traveling with work and I informed them I wouldn't be able to send it until I returned home and not before I was assured that Playa Gigante was in the same state that it was in before the hurricane. They assured me that it was, that the hacienda had not suffered any damage like other parts of the area, that everything would still be going as planned but I had to make the full payment immediately. Trusting them on their word, I paid. 

The week of the wedding we arrive with 60 of our friends from the States and 40 from Nicaragua family to Hacienda Iguana where we had rental homes so that everyone could stay close by when I receive a very concerned call from my event planner. Our building vendor went by the venue that evening to take a look at the beach and found the beach right in front of the Hacienda in complete shambles. Not only was it impossible for me to walk down any isle from the Hacienda to an altar but there had been changes in the tide that now caused the water to come almost all the way up to the hacienda every night around 5. SO WHERE WAS THIS WEDDING/CEREMONY GONNA TAKE PLACE? 

Long story short, they had no sympathy instead they spent all their time attempting to make us feel bad for wanting our money back b/c they spent money on breakfast for us as our family was going to stay there two nights. This is after I've just brought 60 of our friends from US and Canada for their first trip to Nicaragua and had all my local family rent hotel rooms all around Gigante. They wanted 48 hours...this was on Thursday morning, my wedding was on Saturday. How was I supposed to give these people 48 hours to do anything when they had a month and had not even thought about my plans before I complained. 

When I arrived Thursday morning, the person that was on staff managing that day Mario, I think was very condescending. He acted as we were overreacting and was showing us where we could put things. He was basically showing us a space on the beach that was about 10 feet long and 5 feet wide to place all our 100 people on the beach. Then says things like "maybe you can split them up on the rooftop and some here" clearly there was no other option but to scramble and come up with another plan. 

I had the next two days planned with guest filled excursions, a yacht day in San Juan for my Bachelorette with my girlfriends, a beach day welcome party in Hacienda Iguana (which by the way their beach was completed back to normal) which none of these events ended up taking place. I instead spent the next two days with my event planner re-planning the entire wedding, finding a new location which we got lucky b.c our caterer owns a beautiful restaurant in Hacienda Iguana which he so generously let us use, then having to re-negotiate with each vendor new prices (spend over $4k more than we expected) changing tables to make work in the new space, had to create an entire giant dance floor to go over a pool to make due with the space. It was insane and in the end our wedding was great but NO THANKS TO HACIENDA AMARILLA and their staff. 

Oh and to put icing on the cake, the are refusing to give us back our full refund. 

I just want to warn anyone before ever giving these people your money up front b/c well, I would most def consider them crooks. 

Here are some pics that were sent to me from my planner 2 days before the wedding. Before a come back can be posted by the owner which he likes to do on Facebook. even blocking my husband from posting about their dishonesty.

Hacienda Amarilla Del Mar

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