Pousada Vila Imbassai

The location is great if you want to be near the beach, river, and center, and I liked the pool. The women working there do the best they can, but they’re expected to handle cooking, cleaning, and all sorts of other jobs. They earned my two stars. I visited on March 26, 2024, and unfortunately wasn’t impressed. We looked at three rooms; they were in reasonable shape, but had old things and maintenance issues. The room I stayed in was the better one. Breakfast was the biggest disappointment. I’ve stayed in places at many different price points and never had such a poor breakfast with so few choices. The photos show what I mean. We stayed two nights, and nobody even asked either day whether we had rubbish to be collected. The shower was fixed right against the wall, so I had to face the wall and shower in sections. After 5 p.m. there’s nobody at reception and no security, while the door is left open. At 8 p.m. a man came looking for information, walked in, and was already at our door.

The location was the one positive point. There was no security at the inn, breakfast was very poor, and the last of our two days was worse still. The room and bathroom weren’t properly cleaned. Just two employees were preparing breakfast and handling all the other work at the inn, and perhaps because of that, one of them seemed bad-tempered the whole time. Breakfast had only five options. Bread and cheese are expected, so I don’t count those. I don’t recommend this place.

The grounds are lovely, but the inn needs better management. There wasn’t a single rubbish bin around the property, and some areas need lighting. It’s hard to run an inn with just three people, the owner and two staff doing everything; the rooms need to be inspected and improved. I won’t ever return. My husband and I had booked a chalet and arrived around 6:30 p.m. The place was dark; after he checked that we were in the right place, a few lights came on. We parked in the inn’s own lot, which was pitch black, lit only by one small lamp on the chalet porch. The owner, Mr Habu, was very friendly and attentive. He showed us the chalet, and everything seemed fine at first. Then we found a serious bathroom leak. The floor was wet and the shower wouldn’t turn off, so we listened to dripping all night. We reported it to Mr Habu the next morning, and he promptly tried to fix it. We had finished breakfast and were getting ready for a pre-booked outing when he and a plumber came to inspect it. More plumbers arrived and found it wasn’t a simple problem. From the moment we saw the leak, we’d asked to move into the other chalet, which was empty, but that request was refused. We lost the whole morning and hadn’t even brushed our teeth. We nearly missed the outing, and Mr Habu moved us to an apartment instead. We kept insisting we wanted the other chalet, but he said he already had a problem with us and didn’t want to risk trouble with another guest. We were extremely upset and looked for another inn, but couldn’t find one. In the apartment, there was no handheld bidet spray, and the shower seemed to have a mind of its own: sometimes it worked well, but at night it usually gave only a trickle of scalding water, even when set to off. There was also a leak around the toilet, the bathroom door only closed if locked, and the broken soap holder meant we had to put the soap on the window. The bamboo bed creaked at the slightest movement, and the curtain didn’t block the sun. It was awful. For what we paid, even at the apartment rate, there are many much better inns in Imbassaí.

This is hard to beat for location: it faces the river, with a lovely view, birdsong, plenty of trees, and a real sense of nature. It’s walkable to everywhere, and I felt safe in Imbassaí. The place has no luxury, but it’s very pleasant and has a peaceful, almost farm-village feel. Perfect if you want quiet. I stayed in the executive suite, which was spotless and smelled fresh, from the bedding to the bathroom. Everything felt new. The one thing I didn’t like was breakfast being served only from 8 to 10 a.m. If you get up early to exercise and need to eat first, you end up waiting a long time. Their tapioca couscous is delicious, though. They don’t sell water, soft drinks, or snacks, but there are small shops close by.