Name: Hotel El Chaparral
Address: Final Calle Santander 1 Block Before The Lake,Final Calle Santander, Panajachel, Panajachel, Panajachel, 00113, Guatemala
Rating: 5

24-hour reception

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Currency exchange

Garden

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Family room

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Free Wi-Fi

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Internet

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Parking nearby

Fax and copy machine

Conference Hall

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Location

At the hotel

Quetzaltenango Airport

Hotel El Chaparral

Panajachel

Good location.  The rooms were large enough and the bed comfortable. However, the top sheet was small, barely as wide as the bed.  The bathroom was small and the shower was functional with water spraying everywhere from the shower head but at least the water was hot and plentiful. The hotel claimed to have WiFi but we could never get it to work even when carrying our iPad all around the hotel including the lobby. The front desk is closed about 12 hours each night.  But I would not stay there again, ever, simply because the hotel has a resident rooster that starts crowing shortly after 4AM!  Yes, the rooster lives in the hotel!  Three days we stayed and three days it awakened us!!!  No thanks.

Kill the rooster!

Do yourself a favor and do not book any tours with this hotel. They provide a bunch of lake boat rides and transportation to Guatemala City etc etc... I have been travelling in several Latin American countries and I have never come across such unreliable service until I came to Panajachel and booked with these people. 

Here is the story. My friend and I booked the three lake town (pueblo) boat ride/tour from this hotel and wish we hadnt since we almost missed our transport back to GUA thanks to this unorganized/unreliable organizer. We were assured if we do the tour in the morning, we would be back easily by 3 pm, when our transport was leaving 4 pm. We decided to take the tour with these guys in the morning and everything went fine until we were at the last stop (pueblo). Side note, I did notice in the first pueblo that these people almost left two guys in our boat behind and moved to the next pueblo because the guys were literally like 1 minute late (they had to run after our boat to catch us). At this point, didnt think too much of anything yet. However, at the last pueblo, we were told we would meet at the dock at 2:30 and go back to Pana. My friend and I were there at 2:25 pm and nobody was there. At 2:30 I decided to call an expensive international call to the hotel to ask where their guy is at since we were in a hurry anyways. The lady at the reception said "No worries, he might be late, he will be there soon". I tried to tell her "remember we have our transport back at 4". But she insisted that there was nothing to be worried about. At 2:45, still no one at the dock so my friend and I realized no one was coming and we had to act to be back soon. We were left behind, so it must have that the guy had left early. It started pouring and we had to get out of the last pueblo asap….in that circumstance had to pay 3x the price of the actual tour to get the one ride back to Pana from one of the guys with boats in the dock. When we were on our way back, I called her again and she said that the guy would be at the dock in 10 mins. Lies. By the time we got back to the hotel we were soaked (literally looked liked we had swam in the lake) and the lady was sort of rude when I tried to ask her what is going on etc. She didnt give any explanations and after me pressuring her she just paid a super cheap cab for us to get back to our real hotel to get our stuff because our transport was leaving in less than 10 minutes.

Please dont book with these people, they were straight up lying to us and left us in the pueblo with a little bit of cash on us at the moment. If we had missed our transport back to Guatemala City at 4 pm, we would have missed our flights back home because that was the last bus leaving that day.

Unreliable

The worst experience in Guatemala. The hotel is really old and the rooms are dirty and uncomfortable. There were a lot of cockroaches and the room was dirty, they didn't even clean it up from the previous guests. A terrible smell in the bathroom, terrible towels and no hot water at all. It is supposed to be free wi-fi but it doesn't work and rooms are very noisy too. Moreover, the staff is really rude and if you ask for something or say somethings wrong they say "you can go to another hotel if you don't like it"... Unfortunately, we couldn't because it was a group trip and was already paid. Not recommended at all.

Old, dirty and and terrible

We stayed 1 night with a group of 13 people spread out in 4 rooms. It was nice to have a very large room with 5 beds for a big family but the beds were uncomfortable with the springs poking through. Our room’s window faced the main road and it was so loud all night and day!  Dogs barking, people yelling, cars blasting music. The bathroom was a good size but there were cockroaches in the shower and everytime we turned the faucet on in the sink, it smelled like a sewer. Spotty WiFi- we were on the second floor and could never get it to work. 

We were pretty happy to be so close to the lake though, it wasn’t much of a walk to the marina. 

Loud and uncomfortable 

Stayed at this hotel for one night and I did not have the greatest experience. The beds were not clean and not comfortable. Bathroom was kind of clean but there were a lot of bugs running around, as well as in the bedroom area. Lots of noisy guests and bright lights outside of the room. No curtains or screens to keep out bugs. Almost no breakfast opportunities. Were accussed of not paying for our room, even though we paid at check-in (nobody told us we had to pay when checking out..). So instead of finding a solution for the internal communication error the staff blamed the guests.

Some positive things about this hotel are the location (in the heart of Panajachel!), the price and the green area in the middle of the hotel. Would only stay here again if I had no other option.

Hotel El Chaparral

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