Some perspective first. We (me and my wife) are usually pretty comfortable in all kinds of hotels. Depending on the place on our mood for the trip we may stay at a 5 star or at a very simple B&B, and we are usually pretty happy everywhere. In this specific trip (roadtrip from Sao Paulo state southern beaches to Rio state northern beaches) we stayed in seven or eight places (one was around 70 bucks a night, in high season, and it was a very comforting place) and still this expensive hotel was the only bad experience we had, and a very bad one at that.

On a side note, don't ever thrust the Guia Quatro Rodas publication. Every single thing they recommended (especially this hotel) went wrong for us (example was the restaurant that was supposed to be the best place to eat a typical Santos city dish, and they never served that there, according to a waiter). I'm not sure all their reporters really visit the places they are supposed to evaluate. Back to Pestana:

The good stuff:

Apartments - We stayed at an upgrade, so I guess it was better than the typical apartment. It was big, and cleanliness was acceptable - there were a lot of bugs, but the hotel is in the middle of the woods, so I guess that's OK. The area outside the caban seemed dirty. No air conditioning.

Surroundings - Beatiful place - some of the best pictures of our trip (I mean the water and the mountains - the hotel looks average, or bad for its price)


Now things that weren't so nice:

Our dinner orders took around 2 hours to be served. And it wasn't like they forgot about us by accident. I asked a couple times and the waitress told me the food was almost done. I usually don't like to wait that much (and we were hungry), but we thought maybe the place was special and the food would be great. Not really. My plate (some kind of fish with a salty crust) was barely eatable. I don't even remember the last time I couldn't finish my plate anywhere, but that did it.

The entrance came wrong as well. We ordered the chef suggestion and they brought us something that wasn't even on the menu.

Maybe the worst thing about dinner (and in our overall stay) was the overall mood of the place. Maybe it was just us, but me and my wife felt exactly the same. It was like the entire staff (asides from a cheery guy at the reception) was kinda mad at the guests/depressed or something like that. We felt they hated the fact that we were on vacation and they were not. That must sound strange, but it is something my wife said when I was thinking exactly the same thing - whatever the reason, the mood was kinda sad in the whole place. This mood ws unchanged during our entire stay (3 days)

Also about the mood, I can't blame the hotel for that, but even the guests seemed like sad people. Nobody seemed to be having fun, and the people relaxing looked more like people mourning in my opinion. No idea why - I don't think bad hotel experiences can really run a vacation, unless it is something really extreme. Our stay would become somewhat extreme on the next day though.

Breakfast:

There's no buffet. You choose some things out of a menu, and they bring that and a lot of unordered stuff. If you feel bad about wasting food, you won't like it. The idea of ordering something "fresh" may look nice, but in practice they never ever ever got a single order right, and if I recall correctly there's like 8 options on the menu. Whatever came tasted way better than dinner tough, but we felt a little uncmfortable with the mood and the system. It also took a looong time to have breakfast. Not awful, but far from great in my opinion.


Overall food:

I don't know what food did it, but I got food poison here for the first time in my life, and I'm pretty much used to eat at all kinds of hot dog stands and such, so the suff was probably really bad. We have had dinner at Pestana, Breakfast at Pestana, and I eat a Pestana grilled "coalho" cheese alone - nothing else so I'm pretty sure their food made me sick. I felt really bad and couldn't leave the room (mostly the bathroom to be honest) for almost 24 hours.

Gym: Just before feeling sick I used the gym. It had one of those machines with several uses and a couple of very light weights. I thought nobody used that gym in months. Found Indiana Jones' like amount of dust in ne of the weights and a couple spiders in the gym.

The place is also build on very very steep terrain, so it's not nice to walk around. Their solution was to have staff driving you around with golf carts. Calling a golf cart takes a while and at least for me it made me feel like somewhat of a crybaby (both me and my wife are in good health and could walk around fine), but walking seemed dangerous since we were always worried about the gulf carts passing close to us in narrow curves and what not.


I hate to be such a complainer, but Pestana was a huge disappontment. In my opinion, the hotel was not bad for its price. It was bad, period. At least that was my experience - if you take into consideration their price, than things look even worse. Just after going to Pestana, we stayed in Formule One Rio (very simple hotel that costed me 1/10th of Pestana's price) and we actually had a much better time.



Assuming most other reviewers are true travellers, obviously a lot of people had pleasant experiences at Pestana. Before deciding, I suggest you look at other hotels in this price range anywhere in the world and see how rare it is to have a very expensive hotel have a proportion of bad reviews as significant as this one.

I truly hope they get better, or that my bad experience was a bag full of weird coincidences, but I won't ever be at a Pestana hotel again.

Rooms are spacious double room bungalows, set in pleasant surroundings. Beach is small but private. There is a decent-sized pool, plus gym facilities. Staff were helpful, but not all on the front desk are competent in English. Free wifi. The biggest drawback to staying here is the restaurant. This hotel is relatively isolated and you will probably want to eat your meals here. Breakfast is fine, but the lunch and dinner menus have a Portuguese theme and are quite limited. You'll soon run out of options - more variation is needed and (personal preference) Brazilian food would be preferable.

I live in Rio de Janeiro with my husband and we went to Hotel Pestana Angra dos Reis for six days, partly to check out what Brazilians call one of the most charming spots of their country, and partly to avoid the throng and the noise of the carnival.

Well, as to throng and noise, there certainly wasn't any of those at Hotel Pestana Angra. While all other hotels in the region were fully booked, Pestana was almost empty and after an hour's stay it became perfectly clear why; the place is extremely expensive (a thousand dollars a night during this period) and does not even qualify as a three-star hotel, let alone the five stars that they claim to possess.

There is no lobby to speak of, only a glorified shack, from which a steep road (take hiking boots and a flashlight even to walk around on the hotel premises) leads to the bungalows, which are no more than shacks, either. Furnished in Ikea style, with a terrace that is both dirty and run down (with a ratty divan, rusty railings, loose floorboards with nails sticking out), a minibar that has nothing more thrilling than water, coke, and beer (and to go to the bar takes another hiking trip or there's room service for a steep percentage on top of the already expensive drinks).

The pool area is average, the beach is nice but the shore literally disappears around 3 in the afternoon because of the tide, and even if the tide is low, it is pretty small.

The gym is the non plus ultra of the place: absolutely nothing works in it; two decrepit treadmills, one ancient stepper, and a stone-age bike, and a rusty machine-complex for the upper body...all for the eyes, as NONE OF THEM actually works. Of course there's no air-conditioning and it was built with an open air concept in mind, so the heat would kill you if you were lucky enough to find anything working in there, anyway.

The restaurant's menu is very very limited and most of the time the dishes are a far cry from what is described on the menu or they are not even available. After three days one doesn't feel like eating at all, especially when thinking of the prices (sixty dollars for a cod main course).

The wine list is just as limited, with almost nothing drinkable by glass, and, by now it goes without saying, very expensive.

The only upside of the place is the friendly although incompetent service; the waiters and waitresses are full of smiles and apologies, probably trained to compensate for the frustrations in this cost-effective manner.

Anyway, I could write a novel about the downsides of this hotel, but what it all boils down to is that I seriously warn anyone to go anywhere near the place.

Check in experience - Bizarre!
Accommodation - we had a "Superior" bungalow; open plan large room with concrete dividing wall to bathroom area; no storage for clothes, open hanging space only. TV with cable, DVD player (various films can be borrowed) and small radio / CD player. "Double" bed was two singles pushed together. Refrigerator immediately behind bed with poor selection of drinks, mostly non-alcoholic.
Smell of damp in room - windowframes rotting in places, with curtains being dirty, mouldly, peeling material, falling off tracks. Bed linen damp first night; A/C remote batteries rusted; lampshades mouldy / dirty.
Poor lighting especially bathroom area
Shower - tepid water only
Service - dirty towels / rubbish left outside room all day, but room was cleaned properly
Food:
Breakfast good
Dinner, poor choice - all nights many options the same, minor variations only
Quality generally adequate but very ordinary and not well presented; served on cold plates and often food not hot; They refused to serve us glasses of wine as "wine served by glass all gone" - not prepared to open something else!
Rapping from Eminem not really great dining music...
Service very slow indeed - no idea why given staff to guest ratio, just appears staff have not had any training! Although the staff were all pleasant.
Grounds etc.: I know it is in the rainforest, but do the grounds have to be just as wild? Just tidying up the garden areas and sweeping the paths would make such a difference.
We counted two bungalows only that could be described as having an "ocean view". The rest have close up views of bush; very close up!
Cushions for sunbeds dirty, very old
Beach area very small - would be impossible to have more than a few guests on beach
Decked areas around bungalows unswept
Sauna (by pool) not operational; Jacuzzi (by pool) half full tepid, dirty, green water
Given that this was the beginning of the season, not the end, you would think that maintenance would have been completed to get resort ready for the season!
All in all, a poor three-star, third-rate experience, not the five-stars promised. Ignore what you see on the website for this Pestana resort - if the rest are like this, heaven help the company. If they are not, well, I would not recommend taking a chance on any other Pestana Hotels as a direct result of bad experience here. Have stayed in better chain motels. Manager needs to realise that he cannot trade on location alone!