La Bella Samaria Hostel Boutique

The bed was very comfortable. The rooftop pool is tiny but really nice to have to cool off from the stonking Santa Marta heat. Also the common areas really do look like the pictures and are super attractive, but shame about the rest. The location is good if you have a burning desire to spend time in Santa Marta old town, but the town itself isn't great. It's only a couple of blocks from the best curry house we've encountered in South America, so that is a big plus! Also 5 blocks to the bus station for buses to Tayrona.

This place is definitely about style over substance. It looks absolutely fantastic with all the design touches, but really lacking on the practical things. Our room wasn't one of the ones pictured and was absolutely tiny (my bf is 6 ft 5, which is admittedly very tall, but he couldn't actually stand up straight in there!), there was just enough room to shuffle sideways down the side of the bed, but with our bags there was no floor space at all. It was also and excruciatingly hot even with the fan, though Santa Marta is hot, so unless they install aircon there isn't much they can do about that. However, other basics they can do something about! The bathrooms are terrible. There are no toilet seats on any of the toilets, every toilet was dirty, and when we arrived at about 10pm there wasn't toilet roll in a single toilet. By 11am the next day there was still no toilet roll. The guy on reception went and got us a half roll out of his room, which I guess must have been his private stash. Eventually they did get cleaned and the toilet roll got topped up but about half of them had wee on the bowl at all times, and with no toilet seats it is pretty unpleasant for a girl, or anyone that needs a number 2! In the bathrooms the sinks also looked pretty grimy, someone has gone to the expense of installing fancy looking sinks but nobody has bothered to pass a sponge over them for some time, it was the kind of grime that takes a while to build up but is so easily rectified with a quick wipe down. The dorm rooms also were pitch black and looked like dungeons in the bottom of the building next to the bathrooms. I did get a glimpse inside some of the private rooms with private bathrooms on the middle level (which are the ones in all the pictures) which actually looked really nice, big and airy, and I even spotted a toilet seat, so if you stay here you should splash out and go for one of those!