Staying here last year was a pleasant experience, but this time I think we ran into every possible problem others have experienced. Check in was long and confusing. We had three rooms booked by three different people. Not rocket science. Dirk went in circles for over 30 minutes before we all were paid up and had our keys. They prefer payment in $US, a pain for Canadians, and charge extra if you want to pay with your credit card. When we wanted to pay in pesos, the exchange was chore, he first told us that $176 equalled 3000 pesos. I'm not a total idiot and made him show me his calculations - surprise - it was only 2300 pesos. Had my mother been dealing with him alone, she would have ended up paying the extra. My mom's room had also been listed with 4 people, there were only three staying. This had been clarified through an email. Dirk took the extra $10 a night (for 3 nights) off the bill when we paid. Anna came back 2 days later and asked for the money! We did make an agreement to pay half - her problem was with booking.com, so we were a little sympathetic.

The 2 rooms booked through booking.com included breakfast, while mine did not - not a problem, I didn't expect it to as i had booked directly with Anna. Dirk made sure we knew that we wouldn't get the meal vouchers. We normally just head out to a juice stand and the bakery around the corner. $5 feeds the 4 of us a nice breakfast. The first morning he handed my sister vouchers for all of us. I thought it was a nice touch of customer service after the awkward check in. No mention of paying for them. I thanked him after breakfast. Next day, same thing. I thanked him again for breakfast - maybe he's making up for the noise? Third day - again. When we went to check out, Anna wanted an extra $60 for the meals! She went right off the deep end when I told her I wasn't paying. She could not understand how I would not pay for something I did not ask for, and really didn't want. Good customer service would have been to apolgize for the error and promise to make it clearer next time. Instead I got shouting and a door slammed. She needs to figure out that if her husband offers something, it's pretty tacky to come back later and ask for the money back.

The guy atthe desk at the time was apologetic and quite nice about things. I did make the mistake of leaving the luggage there while we went for lunch. We had 2 hours after checkout before our bus left.

I really didn't think she might stoop so low, but when we made it to the Cancun airport and were stowing our last few purchases in our luggage before checking in, we discovered the suitcases had been gone through. We have a very specific way of packing and it was completely out of order. We put the luggage on on the bus, we took it off - nobody touched them there. The only place it could have happened was at the hotel. Several hundred dollars in jewellery and souvenirs was missing. Nice - everything from tacky little cloth wallets to a silver and amethyst bracelet were missing. All had been wrapped up and placed in the centre of suitcases inside other clothes. You really had to dig to get at them.

The bar next door was in full swing every day. It did stop at 9pm, but you couldn't stand to be anywhere near your room until then. No afternoon siestas, that's for sure.

Construction on 10th ave made it pretty dusty on the patio.

Overall, it was all things we could have put up with if it hadn't been for Anna and the theft. I would never stay there again as long as she is around.