This report describes our stay at the all-inclusive Iberostar Paraiso Maya resort, May 21-28 2005. The following topics will be covered:
I. Iberostar Paraiso resort complex
II. Maya room
III. Maya grounds, pools, and beach
IV. Dining and entertainment
V. Excursions:
A. Iberostar Tucan/Quetzal
B. Xel-Ha
C. Mayan Palace golf course
D. Xcaret
VI. Overall impressions & Xel-Ha/Xcaret comparison
Photos of our trip are at
http://community.webshots.com/album/359135168rnJkCA . If you have questions after reading this report, please feel free to post them or PM me.
I. Iberostar Paraiso resorts.
“Wow!” pretty much sums it up. This resort complex is incredible! Even after we had been there several days, we still kept saying, “Wow!”.
For background, we are frequent Caribbean travelers. We have been on three Caribbean cruises, and this was our fourth all-inclusive resort vacation. We have stayed at Sandals Ocho Rios, Secrets Excellence Punta Cana, and Couples Swept Away Negril. This was our second trip to the Iberostar Paraiso complex, having previously stayed at the Iberostar Paraiso Beach resort. We chose to return to Iberostar Paraiso because of the quality we experienced on our first visit. Not only were our high expectations met this time, they were actually exceeded!
The Iberostar Paraiso complex is located about 30 minutes south of the Cancun airport, and 20 minutes north of Playa Del Carmen. It consists of four hotels: the Del Mar, the Beach, the Lindo, and the Maya. They are building a fifth resort, the Palace. The Del Mar and Beach are two sides of a single resort; they share all their pools, restaurants, and bars, and have identical room amenities. If you stay at the Del Mar or Beach, you can eat at air-conditioned a la carte restaurants three times per week, and perhaps pick up additional last-minute reservations based on availability. The rest of the time, these guests eat at an open-air buffet.
The Lindo and Maya hotels also share a set of pools, restaurants, and bars. They are more expensive than the Del Mar and Beach, and guests of the Lindo and Maya can make reservations to eat in air-conditioned a la carte restaurants every night if they wish. With some exceptions, Del Mar and Beach guests cannot use the Lindo and Maya facilities. The Lindo and Maya are newer, offer larger rooms, and serve more top shelf liquors. The Maya is even more expensive than the Lindo, with fancier rooms, and theoretically Lindo guests are not allowed to use the Maya’s three courtyard pools, nor book two of its restaurants. These rules were not being enforced during our stay.
Iberostar also owns other hotels in the area: the Tucan & Quetzal (another twin hotel) in Playa del Carmen, and the Iberostar Cozumel on Cozumel island. Iberostar guests can visit the other area properties during the day and enjoy the pools, beach, and lunch buffets, although transportation is not included.
II. Maya room.
We arrived in Cancun after an uneventful nonstop flight from Kansas City (love those Funjet direct charter flights!). On our previous visit to the Cancun airport on a Saturday, we waited in a two-hour line to clear Immigration. This time, we breezed through with virtually no waiting. Despite my husband’s bag being literally the last one off the plane, we were on our bus less than an hour after touchdown. We took the bag of coupons and goodies offered by the ladies with the Mexican tourism council, ignored the timeshare salespeople who try to trick you into thinking they are your tour operators (they weren’t too pesky this time), and quickly located our local Funjet reps in the distinctive turquoise shirts and white pants. Our entire busload was headed for the Iberostar Paraiso complex—too bad because I enjoy seeing other resorts! On the ride, our Funjet/Lomas rep, Miguel, gave us a little briefing on the amenities of the resort. The bus ride took about 35 minutes, and was very comfortable, since the bus was air-conditioned and well upholstered.
From our first glimpse of the Maya, we were blown away. The lobby is housed in an enormous Mayan-style pyramid, which is lit up in changing colors at night. You can’t miss it from the highway. The grounds are elegantly landscaped and perfectly manicured, as we expected from our previous experience with Iberostar. The lobby is huge, air-conditioned, and majestic, with marble and tropical hardwoods everywhere.
I had been in touch with the resort by e-mail prior to our visit, to make sure their records showed we were previous Iberostar guests, and that our room preference was a king bed (as opposed to two queens), on the top floor, in a quiet location. We had booked a Junior Suite, the basic and most common room category at the Maya. Upon check-in, we were delighted that not only were our room preferences honored, but we were offered a free upgrade to the larger room, the Superior Suite! Did I mention that we love Iberostar? Later that evening, the bellman brought us two complimentary Iberostar T-shirts.
Check-in only took about 5 minutes. Unlike many other chains, Iberostar did not register a credit card, meaning we could not charge resort purchases to our room. We waited another 5 minutes for the bellman to get a golf cart, and then we were off to our room. The bellman’s English was perfectly fluent, and during the ride he pointed out some of the newer features of the resort. We quickly arrived at building 60, the building closest to the beach and furthest from the lobby. Our concierge greeted us as we arrived, and then we got our first glimpse of the room.
Now, I usually don’t care what my room looks like on vacation, as long as it is clean, since I aim to spend as little time there as possible. Before our trip, I kind of wished we had booked the Lindo, and not spent the extra money for the fancier Maya room. But this room was so incredible, it turned out to be one of my favorite aspects of the trip. Now I am totally spoiled! The room was immaculate, beautiful, and huge. The room was more than 40 feet long from door to balcony, with high ceilings. Floors were polished stone, with burgundy Mexican throw rugs that matched the elegant hacienda-style décor. We were happy to be on the third (top) floor, since the stone floors don’t do much to muffle footsteps. Our room was very quiet almost all the time.
The bathroom featured a large glass shower stall with a shower head 8 feet off the ground. My 6’3” husband enjoyed not having to crouch under the shower! There are twin sinks and a large Jacuzzi tub, and a phone in the bathroom. Some TV channels can be heard on the bathroom speakers. They put more towels in the bathroom than you could possibly use in a day, and two robes. The entry area features two large closets with plenty of shelves and 10 hangers each, a coffee maker, a digital safe, and a minifridge stocked with 4 bottled waters, 2 agua minerales, 2 Sprite, 2 Fanta, 2 bottled Cokes, 2 Coke Light, 2 Sol beers, 1 Superior, and 1 Dos Equis. There was also a bottle of tequila, a gallon of purified water, and plenty of coffee and tea.
The bedroom had a DVD player, CD alarm clock, satellite TV, 5 bed pillows and numerous throw pillows. The bed was comfortable, firm, and sat on box springs rather than the concrete platform used in many Mexican hotels. Lighting was good; there were so many switches that it took us a while to figure out what each one did! Air-conditioning was excellent, with digital temperature control and 4 fan settings. There is a ceiling fan in the bedroom and one in the sitting area.
The sitting area was very generous and included a coffee table, couch and two chairs. They were attractive, but you wouldn’t want to sit on them for hours. On arrival, we found a fruit plate with apples, grapes, a pear, bananas, and a nice ripe papaya. Bottles of peanuts and pistachios appeared the next day. There was a nice sized balcony with a drying rack, table and two chairs, as well as a hanging rope chair that looked great but wasn’t very comfortable. Planters around the balcony are attractively planted with croton and other colorful tropical foliage.
It was great having a concierge. They called us a couple of times just to check that everything was good, and asked if we needed anything whenever they saw us go by. When we first arrived, there were no robes in our room. I remembered after a while that there were supposed to be robes, and asked the concierge about them. The next time we went to our room, less than two hours later, there they were! The built-in hairdryer separated from its hose. I filled out a repair card and left it for the housekeeper, and the very next time we entered the room, it was fixed. The housekeepers did nightly turndown service. They left us fresh towels twice a day, and towel animals with candy or flowers at least once and often twice a day. We left them a daily tip of $2-3 in appreciation of their efforts, but I truly believe our service would have been just as good without the tip. Iberostar employees definitely go the extra mile for you!
III. Maya grounds, pools, and beach.
This whole resort is visually stunning. We loved the series of unique and beautiful courtyards that we passed through every day, on our way from our room to the Maya lobby. Our photos don’t really do them justice, but may give you a hint of how lovely everything is. Staff worked around the clock to keep everything perfectly maintained and sparkling clean. Even late at night, they were vacuuming the pools and scrubbing the walkways.
The Maya and Lindo sides of the resort show tremendous creativity with architecture and décor. There is a lot of polished stone and lush landscaping. The Beach and Del Mar sides are equally beautiful, equally lush, and equally well landscaped, but their buildings and walkways are not as unique and whimsical. Some guests have commented that the Beach and Del Mar side seems more tropical, but I don’t agree. Maybe the Lindo and Maya landscaping is more mature now. I found all four areas equally attractive, and certainly wouldn’t base a decision between them on the appearance of their grounds.
The Beach/Del Mar pools and the Lindo/Maya pools are also equally stunning. These are huge free-form pools, the prettiest I have ever seen, with fountains, waterfalls, and swim-up bars. One advantage of the Lindo/Maya pools is that there were always plenty of palapas and chairs, whether you prefer sun or shade. No need to reserve chairs here! Do bring your own floats if you want them; they are furnished only in the lazy river area. Plenty of fresh towels were always available. There was poolside drink service, and the “helado lady” passed through periodically with a cooler full of complimentary ice cream sandwiches and creamsicles.
The Lindo/Maya side features a wave pool and a lazy river, which are pretty cool; but again, I wouldn’t use this as a criterion for choosing one side over the other. The lazy river tempted us when we first saw it, but all the floats were in use. By the time we had a chance to use it, we had visited Xel-Ha and drifted down their real lazy river, and the Lindo one would have been an anticlimax. The wave pool only operates for the first 15 minutes of most hours. It’s very nice, but you can have the same experience any time just a few hundred feet away, at the beach. I would have used the wave pool more at a resort in Vegas, for example, where there is no real beach.
Speaking of the beach, it is lovely. Very long and wide, with soft white sand and an ample supply of palapas and loungers and hammocks. Palapas are more plentiful directly in front of the Maya, but all four hotels basically share the same beach. Lindo/Maya guests are the only ones who can use the beach grill, but there are beach bars in front of all the hotels.
Waves were about 1-2 feet most of the time. Most days during our visit, the yellow flag was up; a few days, the red flag. The surf was too active for much snorkeling visibility, but comfortable for swimming and watersports. We did see some topless women, though not as many as we previously observed in August, when the southern European guests seemed to outnumber the Americans. This time, the guest mix was perhaps half U.S. and Canadian, and about half Europeans (many of them British).
The gym is a shared facility between the four hotels, in the same building as the spa. It is very well equipped with 6 treadmills, 4 stair climbers, ellipticals, free weights, and weight machines. We never had to wait for equipment. They furnish all the fresh towels you could want. There is a water cooler with paper cones to drink from. If I could change only one thing about this resort, it would be to have the gym be air-conditioned. There was good airflow from fans, but it was still pretty warm in the gym, even early in the morning.
I am a mosquito magnet, and did find that I had to wear mosquito repellent to the gym, and at night, even in the air-conditioned restaurants. I still got a few bites. My husband did not wear mosquito repellent and did not get bitten. Remarkably for the Caribbean climate, we never saw a single insect of any type in the room.
To be continued in Part II
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