El Horcajo is a ranch located about 15 minutes from Ronda on curvy roads. The long gravel driveway to ranch was down steep hairpin turns that was pretty scary at night.
The basic dated rooms were off of the courtyard. The man at the front desk did not speak any English and our Spanish is limited, so he just showed us where we ate breakfast and handed us the keys to room 7.
Our room had a variety of spiders, centipedes, ants, rolly pollies and hordes of crickets everywhere. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there were at least a couple
dozen large insects crawling around. We tried to scoop them up and put them outside, but each time we opened the door more crickets would jump into the room.
The room was so cold that night that I had to wear 3 layers of clothing to bed under the covers. The radiator didn't work and the remote seemed to only operate the AC. I only had a couple hours of sleep since i was freezing and afraid the bugs would crawl on me. The bathroom smelled of sewer or sulfur that seeped into the bedroom. The towels were old and paper thin.
Breakfast was simple with rock-hard toast, plastic wrapped croissants, yogurt, salami, cheese and fruit. Also there was no wifi, so we were not able to plan from this remote location.
The next morning before breakfast, we told an English speaking staff member that we wanted to check out and did not need the next two nights because there was no heat and insects crawling everywhere. She explained that the AC remote slid open and there was a heat mode. It would have been helpful if the man at check in showed this to us because the nonworking radiator next to the bed was misleading.
She said that she had to charge us for that night because we should have said something the night before and it was a busy holiday weekend. There wasn't any way to communicate since the man did not speak any English and I'm sure our limited Spanish with charades would not have gotten the problems across.
Since we were charged for that second night, we stayed there comforted that we would at least have heat. My husband removed and killed the new round of insects that day, so I felt a little better about closing my eyes. Although this night, a family with a new born baby was in a room next to us crying almost all night. It was warmer, so I'm not sure if it was thin walls or their windows were open. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep that night either.
The only positive comment is that we liked the unusually long pillows. I'm not sure how this property has good reviews. My advice is to stay in or closer to Ronda with wifi and if there is a problem you can easily check into another hotel.
