Our stay at Tropico de Capricornio was disappointing to say the least.
Let’s start with the positives: The Pousada is in an excellent location on a hill overlooking the Ferradura bay. The grounds are immaculate and the rooms are ample and clean, each with a comfortably furnished balcony. Also, unlike many of the “upscale” Pousadas in Buzios, there are no nearby bars, or clubs to interrupt a good night’s sleep. The pool area is also quite impressive, although many chipped and cracked tiles are visible on closer inspection. The wireless in the main hotel worked well, but the relay to the banana plantation house where we stayed did not work for the duration of our stay. The reason for this being that the host explained that he would only be able to obtain a replacement relay from Switzerland to repair the problem????
Moving on to the negatives: We selected this Pousada based on the Tripadvisor ratings and comments. Based on those comments we anticipated a warm welcome from the hosts, an excellent breakfast and an overall upscale experience. This was not the case. The host does his best, but we found his wife to be haughty and frosty. The breakfast was very average and when I indicated to aforementioned Miss Frosty, that I didn’t care for orange juice on the first day I was offered iced-filtered water (thereafter nothing). This in Brazil where even in a motorway service station there are normally five or six juices varieties available. You’d also expect a boutique hotel run by Europeans to have an Expresso machine or at least to offer something other than an insipid and tepid excuse for coffee.
Speaking of tepid, that was as hot as the water got in our room during our entire stay. We were given a variety of reasons and the host tried a variety of ineffective DIY remedies. We understand that things don’t always work perfectly, but we were paying a lot of money to stay in this self-described “boutique hotel de charme,” and four days with no hot water was unacceptable. We even had to ask permission on the third day (which was only granted grudgingly by the hostess), for my seven months pregnant wife to use a room in the main house, which is served by a different heating system, to take a single hot shower. Also lacking from our “hotel de charme” experience was an apology of any meaningful description for the unfortunate lack of “eau chaude”.
We’ve stayed in a lot of boutique hotels, some good, some not so good. However, I think that Tropico de Capricornio is unique in that the towels apparently made their debut in a hair salon, the toiletry items on offer were single pack “Lux” soaps and a giant size bottle of 2-1 shampoo and conditioner. Also the aging fixtures and electrical fittings hanging off the wall could hardly be considered to be a part of the “charme” in this pretentious little place, which has the nerve to offer a R$800 champagne on the plastic wrapped A4 laser printed room service menu.
I spend half an hour perusing the other Tripadvisor reviews of this hotel on our return to Rio, wondering how we could have had such a negative experience in relation to that of so many others. I conclude that the many of the ratings for this hotel are false. 20 of the 30 excellent reviews come from reviewers who have only placed one review…could these be friends of the hosts and not legitimate paying guests? If you exclude these 20 reviews, Tropico de Capricornio falls to where it deserves to be… at the bottom of the rankings.
Room Tip: Stay somewhere else
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
4 February 2012
Thank you very much for your constructive review.
We appreciated your positives critics. The Banana plantation house wireless system is new and working well with a stronger signal, the solar heater was and is working well and the electric problem has been resolved after 4 days of a local specialist job. The explanations that I provided you were badly interpreted, just to verify that too many information harm information. It was impossible to change the room, the planning of occupation don´t allow us to propose you another room for the rest of your stay.
We are swayed by your argument: we aren’t “a motorway service station”. Our house is old and his charm is to be different than other new standard cold and minimalist hotel. Yes, we have some “antics” towels specially used for to dry hair, many kept them like remembering, they are marked with my name. Conscious of modernized our establishment we have just installed new split air-conditioners in the Banana Plantation house.
For the breakfast, your opinion don’t sow the seeds of doubt in our mind, the other review confirm us in our politic.
Apart the 50 TripAdvisor reviews, we have 29 Booking.com reviews with a rate of 8,4/10. Our “pretentious little place” is the fruit of all the reviews wrote by persons who had pleasure, relaxed and excellent stays in our house; to call our and hosts honesty into question throws discredit on ours reviews. We are not enough rich for to pay them and not enough disturbed for to do it. For the respect of these people, we would forget your poor remark.
My wife is a respectable person who could be your mother, she has more than 50 years of experience and success in public relations, if my wife is Miss Frosty, sorry, she is very sensitive to the Newyorker winter frozen wind.
For to preserve your review spirit , if we have not Blue Mountain coffee, our R$ 800,00 Champagne is one of the best of the world: Perrier-Jouet “Belle Epoque” 1996 very well preserved in a 14° Celsius wine cellar, I find a value on a Brazilian web site, with discount R$ 750,00. In your opinion, how much this bottle should be sold ?
If by chance, you come back in Buzios, I think you would not reserve in Tropico de Capricornio but it will be with great pleasure that we will offer you a friendship glass of a delicious Brazilian Espumante.
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