Villa Arabesque

Acapulco, Baja Mexico

My husband and I just returned from our trip booked on an on line stay at the Villa. The weather was beautiful, very warm; we had a very good time. Here is a summary of the trip:

Overall: This place ROCKS! Go there if you are looking for a relaxing escape, just keep in mind you are in MEXICO and sometimes things are done differently there…

Location: The Villa overlooks the Bay, and to get there we booked transportation through the property manager, Oscar. We did not trust a taxi would get us there to be honest. When we arrived at the airport, Saul (who was awesome) was there to pick us up and took us to the Villa. It was definitely off the beaten path, and we went through two security check points with private, armed security, to get to the exclusive neighborhood. We immediately knew there would be no cabs in the area, and that if we wanted to go into town we would need to (a) call a cab or (b) hire a driver. Saul provided us with his cell phone number, brochures for tours and said he or one of his team could pick us up any time, take us to dinner, on a city tour etc. With that said, we felt pretty good about our ability to get around despite the secluded location, on the other hand, the secluded location was pretty great, it lent to us feeling like we were truly away from it all.

Service: Upon arrival to the Villa, Oscar, the property manager, greeted us with several other employees. A Staff member quickly took our bags and led us to our room. We had asked Oscar, at the time of booking per the LL auction, for the room we wanted and Oscar confirmed. When we arrived at our room, it was not what we asked for. We talked about the situation with Oscar, and he went on to say he booked our room with a customer who is paying more than we did. We were a bit perplexed, but the secondary room was pretty nice, so we told him we were disappointed, but will be ok in the room he gave us. He said after a couple days he would look at moving us to our originally picked room. So just know that even if you do book a room you prefer, it is tentative, as anyone who pays more than you for YOUR room will get it. I told Oscar he should add that fact to his Auctions on LL. All the rooms are nice though, some are just bigger than others. We toured the house/grounds on arrival, and that first night, we were the only people there—so we had this 4400 foot house with three pools, and 4+ service people all to ourselves. The room situation was the ONLY issue we had, every day Oscar would call us to see how we were doing, recommend things to do, and call Saul for us if we needed. The service was actually amazing!! Oscar had a service lead, his nick name is Chucho, and he ROCKED!! He was awesome, and so nice. Not a lot of English is spoken there; my husband speaks Spanish se we did pretty well. Oscar does speak English for those non Spanish speakers. Oscar let us know that we could choose the foods we wanted for lunch and dinner, the staff would go and buy it and cook it for us. Further, they would do so at the times we specify! That was GREAT, so we asked for things like Enchiladas, Taquitos, Fajitas, Sandwiches, steak, lobster, etc. Beer was $2.00 and Mixed drinks averaged $4.00. The food was great, and before every meal, Chucho would call us and ask where we would like to eat our meal i.e. in our room, by the pool, in the grand lobby overlooking the bay, etc. The staff was so attentive, kind and would surprise us with fresh glasses of water when we would return from a day out.

Villa/Amenities: The Villa itself is really over the top. The grounds are well cared for and EXTREMELY clean. The entire house is outdoors with some roofs and open air windows with the exception of the sleeping rooms, which are all enclosed with air conditioning (no TV’s). Overall I would say it was fantastic, but a little worn i.e. peeling paint here and there and some cracks in door ways things like that. The water in the sleeping rooms had nice pressure but took forever to heat up…so before showering, let the water run for a bit. We did have access to everything, but the disco was never open in terms of dancing, drinks etc. We actually never checked out the tennis room, and the secluded private beach is not usable, the tide is too high. All in all the villa is a great place for a couple to hang out, but not a lot to do which is nice in itself as we laid out by the infinity pool a couple days, which was beautiful and relaxing, but we needed to get out of the Villa if we wanted to dance, lay on the beach, etc. The Villa has a boat launch at the ocean edge, and Saul suggested we could have Jet Skis brought over and we could jet ski in the bay for a bit, just an idea, but we did not do it after all. Sounded fun though…The Villa would be awesome for a group of people to hang out in as well as great for couples…

Surrounding Area: We booked several tours through Saul to check out the surrounding area. One tour was a city tour, and we had a fabulous guide (Domingo) pick us up and give us personal city tour (just us, no other tourists). They charged a mere $30 pp and we went shopping at the flea market, drove around the coast line, saw the cliff divers and Flamingo hotel where Tarzan from the 50’s lived. The Flamingo was run down and we were teleported back to the 50’s, but the views were fabulous, and the bar had a great Coco Loco drink inside a coconut, which apparently was invented there. Finally we went to lunch at a restaurant our guide Domingo recommended (La Canastas) which served a ton of really good food and beer for like $18. Domingo is very in with the locals, and he took us to stores he knows to have quality merchandise, he was GREAT!!!

We took another shopping tour on a different day, and asked our driver to drop us at a local mall, and various other local shops, then ate lunch at Senor Frogs, which was very fun! Lastly, we took another tour that took us first to a small boat through freshwater mangrove trees and wildlife tour, which was awesome, next we went to lunch, again, great food, and lastly we went to a Sea turtle preserve and let some newly hatched baby sea turtles go into the ocean. To see the tiny turtles was so fascinating, I could not help wondering if we were doing the right thing by letting only 10 go into the sea as we know predators are waiting…I guess we can hope for the best and put our faith into the preserve i.e. they know what they are doing. All of these tours were basically personal, high tough service with no other tourists, and they were not rushed and if we wanted to hang out longer in an area, we were free to do so.

Overall Acapulco is a great place to visit, with a touch of very poor people. The area is renewing and rebuilding, so there is a lot of work for the locals at this time.