La Buena Vida Hotel

The staff, especially Elena, was very friendly, helpful and attentive. The place is comfortable, quiet at night and close to all the restaurants in town. It was hard to know which days the restaurant was open, but I guess that depends on the number of guests staying at the hotel. Overall, great stay!

Don’t expect a lot in general being in Santa Catalina. It’s just a village and overall you won’t find luxuries properties to stay. La Buena vida is centrally located close to everything and you have a private room with the shower that is great. Overall, though, the property needs a lot of work - the area is full of fallen leaves and definitely needs cleaning. The room was humid and had filthy smell. Although there is restaurant on site, we were able to have breakfast only once - there was no staff at 7 am to prepare breakfast (although they supposed to be working). We had a good stay overall, but I would say that the property is definitely overrated and the price to too high for what it is.

El personal y los dueños muy atentos a resolver y dar apoyo en cualquier necesidad.. sin embargo el restaurante cierra muy temprano por la tarde y para mi gusto era muy campestre pero se pasan muy buenos días de descanso porque tiene una excelente ubicación y es una zona tranquila

Staff was never there during hours of operation , breakfast was not available both mornings and our room never got cleaned

Admiten reservas con las instalaciones del hotel cerradas y el personal de vacaciones. Deberian avisar que hasta noviembre no habre el hotel con todos los servicios.

Leider ist das Personal nur bis 2pm erreichbar.
Strom und Wasser fallen in Santa Catalina regelmässig aus.

Very good location. Great breakfast and nice hammocks in shade of porch.

Het is een unieke plek, maar oud. Veel dingen stuk.

Goede wifi. Stadje is leuk veel excursies te doen.

Excellent staff and great location, enjoyed our stay

Cercanía a los sitios de interés. ubicación y diseño con el ambiente que lo rodea.

La Buena Vida doesn't do room cleaning during one's visit. I also couldn't initially check in at 3PM, as there was nobody present at the reception. I had to wait for five minutes for someone to show up. When I left at 6.45AM, nobody was present at the reception again. After calling a few times, I gave up again, and left the key and the money due at a table outside of the reception.

The hotel is quite dated, our room was dark and furniture, mattress, bathroom, floors, mosquito screens would need renovation/replacement. There was a functioning AC in the room. Good location in walking distance from the beach, restaurants and activities. Professional staff. Price was reasonable even given the shortcomings.

Very well-located, charming small hotel, nice and comfortable rooms, very nice and helpful staff. Would recoomend it and would surely stay there again

We rented the bigger Casa del Mar appartment for 3 nights.
A large room perfect for our family of 5. Confortable and clean. Kitchen was fully functional and included a large fridge and coffee machine. Dishes supplied, but no pantry items (ex: salt and pepper, coffee filters...) and no toaster available, unfortunately. Local grocery store has the essentials, and fruit vendor trucks drive by the hotel on a daily basis..

We had tacos for lunch at the hotel restaurant which were delicious.

Location and parking is convenient, A short 5 min walk to Santa Catalina Beach, but further from the nicer surf beach, Estero, so we would drive there. Surfboard rental are available around Estero beach.

Elena, the manager (and yoga instructor), offered excellent service both before and during our stay, answering all our questions and helping organizing our activities, such as horseback riding at Ibiscus Garden).

My wife had a massage, which was great, however pricey, at 65-70$ for an hour. We were suprised to find such high-end prices (higher than in Canada anyway!) in such a small, off the beaten path village. No doubt they would have gotten more business from us if massage prices were more reasonnable.

All in all a great stay in a very welcoming hotel which offers great value for the price. We would stay there again without hesitation.

The property had 2 different places under the same hotel.com booking. Pictures and quality are way different. One is a nice simple hotel and the other is a hostel. We stay one night at the hostel since we arrived late and just wanted to crash and we moved to the hotel side the next morning. Staff is really friend and gave zero hassle about moving and said they would separate the 2 properties.

Love this place has a yoga studio at the top of the hill on the hotel property. The food was pretty amazing as well the only thing missing was a pool but you can walk 5 mins to the beach.