Not many reviews of this nice hotel and island so hope better late than never works for you. 3 friends and me stayed February 18-20, 2004. The hotel is on the very north part of the island on a beautiful beach. It was clean, safe, close to food, Super Mercado Gaivotas across the street, staff as helpful as they could be (Spanish was the best we could do and that was weak). Lots of beach activity, surf lessons, people, places to eat, bikes. We loved the vendors on the beach and actually made several ‘friends’ looking forward to seeing them every day. If you don’t like to be bothered the staff is very quick to run them off. Met some nice retired guests from Argentina. This is a popular sport for Argentina vacations.

Hired a driver and car and that was a good move. The hotel arranged it. The rental place was located right at the end of the street leading to the hotel….say hi to Ahre (spelling) nice guy who drove us. The BMW was $3.60 US more than the junker…. per day!!! I wanted to see a garden center so we toured Primavera Garden Center and met a nice guy named Marcel who was of German decent (common to this area of Brazil). He spoke very good English and I think enjoyed being able to practice. Good for us. Marcel translated between Ahre and us and planned the rest of the day tour. Worked out perfect. Do yourself a favor and go eat here…………Retiro da Lagoa…..it is located on the big Lagoa da Conceicao. Ahre’s suggestion. Fantastic food. Not a word of English spoken and the meal could not have been more perfect or flavorful. Very fresh fish... like 5 AM they were swimming and at noon we were eating! HUGE shrimp and a ton of food – I was stuffed – THEN they brought out a huge grilled whole fish. Anyway, after one bite... well, we ate it all! We crammed in an early lunch the next day so the other guys could try it out before we had to fly out. They were equally impressed. We spent less than 15.00 US including lots of drinks and tip. We hit the center of town quickly but rain kept us from really enjoying much.

My buddy booked all our reservations in the US using brol.com and he worked with Patricia. We had no problems.