Well, where do i begin, except to say this is our fourth trip to the beautiful island of Cuba. Last year we were engaged, in cuba, and this year we decided to celebrate our honeymoon with my bride's daughters 16, and 20 year old. unique and give them the experience that we so much enjoy. From the time we arrived our check in and settling in our rooms was done very neat and friendly .Special thank you goes to our new friend Lisandro Rojas Pena ,(reservations ) who works tirelessly and helped us secure our rooms we requested as well as pre booking our ala carte dinners a nice surprise a welcome letter from gen Manager w bottle of bubbly to help us celebrate honeymoon.(girls had own room) ha ha the buffet was very good with wide variety of foods to try . with no excuse to go hungry anywhere . the 3 ala carte restaurants we tried were Cuban; which was very nice with local cuban comfort food, the Italian was very nice atmosphere however the food was lacking any flavor (i never criticize what i eat normally as i am a chef and enjoy eating, i feel it needs a Italian chef or better recipes(enough said). the best by far was Japanese, from decor, staff, and food prepared in front of you with very animated chef Jolie who was so much fun and devoted to her profession, and Nestor the waiter . we all enjoyed all that PCV had to offer. the beach was very nice with plenty of chairs, a great bar and friendly staff(Junior and Maylin ) keep my thermos insulated glass topped up( purely for quality control).the snorkeling was good with plenty of fish to feed bananas to. i agree with many of previous reviews so i wont repeat to much. just to say that despite the very low wages that are paid to the resort workers, these honest and friendly people give all to us travelers of which there is a wide variety of always smiling. they ask for so little. if at all. so when you are considering a safe, friendly fun and real vacation think about cuba after all, we came to relax, right?

What a fantastic place, food amazing, rooms lovely and clean, beach amazing , ive been cuba 3 times and this place is probably the best

got engaged there and upgraded on last 2 days with no hassle and thomascook rep was amazing got us champagne and chocalates

all the staff extra friendly

book it !!

We went to PCV for two weeks from 25 January - our second visit. The first one was eight years ago when it was operated by Superclubs. Not many changes, apart from the bedroom furnishings being a bit tired, but hey, you don't spend much time in your room when on holiday! The gardens looked even better than last time we were there - an absolute paradise - the gardeners are constantly on duty and do a great job. The majority of the staff had been there when we were there in 2004 and as before they are the best thing at PCV - so friendly, happy and smiley. I include brief comments under various headings below:

Restaurants/bars
We dined very well in the main buffet restaurant by being selective and having freshly cooked food from one of the many cooking stations. There's always a good selection including pasta,fish/seafood etc Also a large selection of hot and cold prepared food. Several days they BBQ'd suckling pigs outside the restaurant, which were very good. At breakfast we had freshly cooked omelettes in this restaurant. We took lunch most days at El Conuco, the creole restaurant close to the beach, where they had a limited lunch menu of freshly cooked items. The one evening we went there, we weren't that impressed, having a tough steak and chewy lobster dish. Due to the Trip Advisor reports, we missed out on the Italian restaurant but did manage a third visit to the Kyoto Japanese restaurant, which is always very entertaining. We did go to the steak restaurant where you have to pay an extra 15 CUC. We probably wouldn't repeat this as they didn't have fillet steak on the menu, so we had T-bones. We got unlucky and got two really tough ones which we sent back. So my husband had rib eye which was better and I had lobster, which was much better than the lobster in El Conuco, but we didn't think it was worth the extra money. We had daytime drinks from the beach bar and envied the Canadians with their insulated mugs. It is difficult to cope with flimsy plastic glasses on the beach. Most of our evening drinks were from the main lobby bar, where service was always good, and they have waiter as well as bar service.

Entertainment
This is one area where we thought standards had gone down since the Superclubs days. There were a few professional shows, which were quite good, but some of the others weren't that great and there were quite a few days in our two weeks where there was no entertainment in the theatre. One night they had a string quartet in the lobby bar, which didn't really seem appropriate for the majority of guests. We are classical music fans but prefer something that's a bit more fun on holiday. A good young Cuban band played in the restaurant several times and also at beer corner, which was just near our balcony. There was also a terrific band from the Blau resort next door, who played on the beach on several afternoons.

Guests
PCV was full when we arrived, as usual with the majority being Canadian and very nice. However, there seemed to be more Quebecois this time and some of them were rather lacking in manners. They also left their plastic glasses and empty bottles all over the beach, even though there were plenty of garbage containers. I've always thought that the UK was the world leader for tattoos, however, I have never seen so many, on people of both sexes and all ages as there were at PCV this time! It was also nice to see that there were quite a few Cuban guests - presumably US residents who are now allowed to visit their home country.

Staff

Great as usual! Thanks to Dayami, Yailet and Ilaida in the main restaurant, who looked after us very well.

Electrical/other room issues
Plenty of power points in rooms, which as another reviewer has mentioned, take both US style and European two-pin plugs. Salon style fixed hairdryer worked very well - very powerful, but rather heavy. Didn't get round to using the iron but it was newish looking, but with a rather marked soleplate. Rather dated radio/CD player in room, which we didn't use as we had brought iPod and docking station. Very good safe which was big enough to take all our valuables, cameras, etc. Aircon worked well and was quiet on the low setting we used. Only slight problem was that we had an issue with what we think was bed bugs, but the management changed the mattress immediately when we told them. Also, bed linen could be changed more often. Was only changed after first five days and we had to ask for it to be changed the second time.

Would we go back?
Yes, but probably not for a while as there are lots of other places in the world we want to visit.

This is a solid 4 star resort as far as Cuba standards are concerned. Everyone is friendly from the moment you arrive until the last minute when you leave. Rooms are nice and roomy, although I recommend a second floor room. All rooms a located centrally around the pool and not far away from the buffet or any of the a la carte restaurants which were all great - pleasant stroll to anywhere on the resort including the beach. It's not cruise ship caliber food, but it is good and lots of it, if your a snob don't go to Cuba and come back and complain about it and spoil it for the rest of us. You're in their country and this is very good food, it's just done a little differently just like any other country - isn't it why you travel is to experience something diffirent.

The people at this resort are amazing, they work so hard and are so cheerful all the time. Treat them like humans, smile and say hola and gracias you'll see what I mean, just like anyone you would meet back at home

Just to name a PCV employees worth mentioning, but of course too many to list them all:
Vivian & Niurka, Guest Services thanks for the special welcome, Liliana our wonderful maid who shared her great smile with us each day, Oresta, Raoul & Annie at the Snack Bar, Patricia, Ricardo & Wilson at the Lobby Bar - Great capaccino's & drinks!, Marlenis & Jesus at the Aqua Bar, thanks for the great service at the pool, Annimation Team, Yoander, Mylena & Mia, what great fun we had, you guys rock!, Pasta Station Lucie is amazing and what a memory - wow! I know I'm missing many others but it was great fun to help PCV employees celebrate 11th years in business. I miss you all already.

I would recommend that you bring water shoes as there are places on the shoreline that are rocky. The snorkelling is pretty good at the Blau end of the beach as well as the Playa Pasquero to the left of the beach. You might want to ensure you lie on a towel even on the chairs and bring insect repellant and afterbite just in case you get bitten by fleas, I didn't have any problems with fleas, but I had a towel on my chair, and the hubby didn't and get got a few bites. Didn't see any misquitos or bed bugs - and I checked!!!

Recommend the Paradise Island excursion - catamaran, snorkelling and lunch of some wild game on Fidel's private holiday island now opened to tourists. I heard the Dolphin excursion is good as well, but I did it last year when we went to Veradero, seen one dolphin you've seen them all.

Basically we just enjoyed practicing the art of doing nothing and came back completely rested and tanned. I would certainly go back with no hesitations whatsoever. Don't know what some folks are complaining about in other writeups - don't believe them.