Casa Palopo

We loved our stay in this well appointed hotel. The room was a good size, attractively decorated and had a lovely terrace overlooking the lake and volcano. The bathroom was small and had steps down to the shower. We had the breakfast inclusive option which was good. Each night we had dinner ate in the hotel which has an interesting varying menu. The staff were charming and very helpful.

One of my favorite hotel experiences. The upper infinity pool and the views are magnificent. Our room had AC so I'm a bit surprised by the reviews on here that said their rooms did not. Large fantastic (but dark) bathroom. Smallish room. The hotel is on Lake Atitlan. Just gorgeous. The service, the views, the pool area (did I mention it has 2 helipads?) One warning, Guatemala is VERY mountainous so everything involves walking up and down hills (they have golf cart shuttles but it doesn't go everywhere). We knew we were in for a treat when they picked us up in a private boat (from our prior hotel) and shuttled us across the lake to Casa Palopo. It felt like we were the only guests because here were so many places to be and relax but very few actual hotel rooms. TWO pools. the infinity pool at the top of the hotel made us feel like we were on top of the world with heavenly views of the lake, mountains and volcanoes. We did meet other guests and it was a good time (except for the guest scolding their teenagers at dinner for 15 minutes. come on. THAT was very annoying!)

Our stay had some highs and lows. The servers in both restaurants were very nice and the presentation of the dishes was excellent. We also greatly enjoyed the views from the hot tub. That said, we were not at all happy with our room. The room, #2, was beautiful and it almost seemed like we stepped in a museum with all the art, but it was not comfortable at all. At no point were we informed that the room did not have air conditioning. This was a big problem for us and made it hard to sleep. The bigger issue was the noise. The room was right underneath the restaurant so we had noise in the evening and again in the morning that kept us awake. As if that was not enough, a stray dog woke us up from his barking for over an hour both nights. To make matters worse, we booked our transfer to and from the hotel through the front desk. The road to Atitlan is very curvy and needed a steady vehicle with good suspicion. That is not what we received and it made the arrival and departure very very rough. Overall, I would say the hotel was beautiful, but not at all comfortable. I'll also say the front desk staff was curt and unaccommodating. When we shared our review, both upon departure and after our return home, we received zero response.

We thoroughly enjoyed our three night stay. Our room overlooked Lake Atitlan. Our room was spacious, stylishly furnished and spotlessly clean and quiet. Decent wifi in our room. It is a short walk across the way and down to the hotel’s quay for boat trips. The staff were helpful. Breakfasts were reasonable. One choice from a breakfast menu included in our tariff.

- If you stay in this hotel, make certain you get a room w/ AC. The entire hotel is open air. We live in FL and are very used to the heat, but not having any space we could cool off in inside was really challenging. - The hotel is very remote. Our planner told us we could get a tuktuk. This would have been impossible. It is a solid 20 minute drive on windy dark roads in the middle of the mountains. You must have a driver. - We found the food to be really bad. We had dinner the first night and breakfast 3 mornings. It was the worst food we had on the entire trip. They are trying to serve international cuisine (I think?) and its just downright inedible. In our experience, the food isn't amazing in Guatemala overall, but we had much better meals at places our guide recommended that served local cuisine. - Staff is very nice, somewhat slow but as expected. - Beware of inaccurate charges. We had to have our driver call to dispute the bill when they itemized us for $250 USD and then charged us $2,500 USD. They never made us aware of the included continental breakfast so we paid a small fortune (in Guatemala standards) to order off the menu and try to find something we could eat. The entire experience made us feel taken advantage of. We used a travel planner - Travel Pioneer - who was less than helpful after the fact. However, not having AC after we expected it was absolutely the biggest issue. As beautiful as the hotel is (the pictures are accurate, its stunning) its very warm during the day. It does cool off at night but you have to compete with the wild dog noises as you leave everything open air in an attempt to sleep.