Casa Chablé

Despite some trepidation with some of the negative reviews we still spent last week at Casa Chable. You have to realise this place truly is in the middle of nowhere and incredibly special for it, it is a car and boat ride (in the dark for us) to get here and the nearest village is 40 minutes away. Because of its location and the fact this place is entirely energy self sufficient there are some challenges around logistics so be flexible, the menu changes due to what they have available but the excellent chef and team will cook pretty much anything for you if they have the ingredients. I advise letting Frida (the excellent concierge) know when you are going to shower so they can increase the water pressure for you. The beds are excellent as is the wifi, the rooms are a little tired but immaculate and I am being picky. In the scheme of things all minor issues.. the rewards are worth it. We had a beach bungalow for a week and the reward of opening the doors in the morning and having a sunrise swim was incredible, we were barefoot pretty much the whole time . Each morning they brought coffee and smoothies to our terrace at 7am, nothing is too much trouble. This is a place to slow down and enjoy the majesty of the nature around you in the Sian Kaan. We saw most people tended to stay for two or three days, in my opinion stay for longer if you can. You have no choice but to wind down. The team Celia the GM, Alejandro, Frida and the amazing restaurant crew were superb. Most of the time you feel you are in your own private paradise as you rarely see the other guests for long. I can honestly say we fell in love with the place and the people will be back. Thank you Casa Chable.

****BE WARNED***** Transportation is NOT included even though the website makes it seem that way. In fact the hotel's recommended transport costs $1700 round trip from TULUM. They provided this information AFTER the 24 hour cancelation window so we could not cancel the reservation. Very deceitful tacit from a reputable resort. And when all of this was brought up immediately and refund requested, they declined to give a full refund.

We had booked for four nights. There were too many bad elements to detail so I’ll summarise. They messed up our travel arrangements so on arrival at the meeting point we were left with our luggage waiting 90 minutes for their boat. The restaurant had a very short menu which got shorter by the day, as dishes became no longer available: so no berries after the first breakfast, no tacos (in Mexico!), no fresh fish and several other items became unavailable. On our last evening, with little left to choose from, they recommended the mahi mahi, not even on the short menu but it was completely tasteless, no doubt frozen. They didn’t charge for it. There was no wine list so the waiter advised us each evening of the few choices they had. By chance on the first evening we chose what turned out to be a decent Mexican wine at dinner but they only had one bottle so the next evening we chose an Albariño but there was only one bottle of that so third evening we had a choice of only three white wines. The service was well meaning but inefficient so sometimes no robes, no water glasses, no fridge refills in our room. The bar was rarely manned and we had to search for staff on the property to get served. The manager told us just to telephone 100 for anything we wanted. We did, several times, no one ever answered! Now all of this would be inexcusable but maybe understandable if the resort was full, however we were the only guests on the first evening, there were four on the second and only six on the third. These were first world problems but Casa Chable charges first world prices, and then some. Overall it was so bad we checked out after 3 nights. They wouldn’t credit the fourth night which was cheap of them but in keeping with their general ethos and it was worth it just to get away from the place.