The hotel sits in a fabulously landscaped, serene oasis a few minutes from town. You can lie in a hammock and read a book, kayak around the bay or arrange for a guided adventure. Mary and Chad are dedicated to ensuring that you have a wonderful stay. The food was great and reasonably priced.The bartender and cook excelled at customer service. I would highly recommend staying in the roomy, nicely decorated and clean cabins. The overall experience was an A plus !!!! Mary
Seattle,Wa

My most recent stay at Parrot Bay was just two weeks ago. I had a business trip to Central America and added two days of fishing. This was my 7 th visit to Parrot Bay and every one has been a great experience. Chad and Mary are very friendly. Chris does a great job in the kitchen and Curley and Helen are wonderful at the bar and resturant. Joanna takes care of everything in the office and does a fine job.

The best part of my stay their was getting to fish with a fine set of captains and mates. Javier and Oliver both captains during the high season worked hard to find fish and we had some success. May is not prime time for offshore billfish, but we had fun on inshore species. I have fished with Javier before and he is always doing whatever he can to find and catch fish. If the fish aren't cooperating he will change up techniques, locations, baits and even stop a shrimp boat to trade beer and water for shrimp. We even managed to catch about 40 lbs for shrimp. Chris turned the fresh catch of snapper and shrimp into a fantastic dinner from the kitchen.

In summary, I would not hesitate to recommend Parrot Bay to anyone interested in visiting the Osa for either fishing or sightseeing. It is a great little place with top class people.

We stayed here several nights this February and I still haven't decided what I think of it overall. Maybe that this place is trying to be a fishing lodge and you should think twice about staying with them if that's not the purpose of your trip.

First the good things:
Large room with beautiful details and comfortable bed.
Overhead fan and working air conditioning (which we used a couple of afternoons).
Good breakfast with that wonderful white Osa pineapple.
Super service from the local guy running the restuarant.
No glitches checking in or out, cheerful adjustment of our fishing price when we switched (at their suggestion) to a cheaper option.
Nice (but short) path along a lagoon opposite the lodge with lots of birds and large reptiles.
We had good fishing on a nice boat with a really 1st rate crew.

Now the iffy things:
The lodge grounds are very small and all the cabinas cluster around the open air bar. This means that you can't escape hearing guys brag about their fishing by going to your room. Unless you close windows and turn on the ac, it's like sharing your room with a bunch of loud and sometimes offensive men out on their own. (They were probably perfectly nice people in mixed groups, but on all guy fishing trips they just had to brag and do the whole one-up-on-you thing - at length.) But since they were serious fishermen they didn't stay up late - I think things wound down before 9 pm.

The activity prices were pretty much as advertised in advance - except that they included very steep transportation fees. Taxi rides were really steep for what they involved. That could be avoided by having a rental car, but there's no way to avoid the very expensive boat rides required for some things, that weren't included in the activity price. That should have been pointed out in advance. Also, some of the activities offered in the room brochure are no longer offered. They haven't been removed from the packages, indicating a slightly disorganized office staff.

I got the impression from talking to other guests that very little of our pricey fishing trip cost was passed along to the captain and mate. Apparently they're expected to make their money off tips and selling the day's catch. If we do this again, we won't use the lodge to set up our fishing trip, but will go with an independant captain/guide.

The management staff has changed very recently and there's a slightly disorganized feel to the entire place. Maybe that will improve as time goes on.

Parrot bay was a very charming resort. The rooms were comforatable and well decorated. The resort itself was beautiful. The nicest place we stayed in during our trip to Costa Rica. The staff were very nice and catered to all of our needs. I would recommend this hotel, but consider the following:

Few minor gripes:

1) The showers have instant hot water heaters and it was hard to get a comfortable shower. The water was either scalding hot or very cold. There was no middle ground. We complained about it and the reply was "what do you expect, this is Costa Rica"

2) The tour we were recommened by the hotel to Mato Palo was nice, but we thought the tour guide did a poor job for the money we paid. The guys name was Juan Carlo or Juan Castro or something like that. I would recommend finding someone else.