Viva Bellavista Hotel

The rooms don’t look like the photos at all. I’ve stayed in more than 300 hotels and have Marriott Bonvoy Titanium and Hilton Diamond status, across small and large, boutique and chain properties. This has to be among the 10 worst I’ve stayed in. I don’t usually review places, but felt I had to here. There’s no table or chair in the rooms for a laptop, so remote workers should skip it. The rooms are small, with the bed taking up about half the space, though at least the beds are fairly comfortable. Two bars are right next door, and reggaeton with heavy bass plays until 4:00 AM every day of the week, making it very loud and hard to sleep. I was charged an extra 15,000 pesos for towel and sheet cleaning, billed to my AMEX without my permission or knowledge. I only noticed it on the bill. At night nobody is at the door, which is locked, so you have to call the hotel to get it opened remotely. The hotel is in a shady part of town with a lot of homeless people. One night right next to the hotel I saw two homeless people fighting in the street, and one pulled out a knife. I’ve been to plenty of rough places, including the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Angola, South Africa, and Culiacan, Mexico. Only Garfield Park on Chicago’s South Side or Caracas in Venezuela felt more dangerous to me.

Everything was organized well, the check-in was easy, and the service was good. Next time I’m back, I’ll book Lib Hotel again without looking elsewhere.

We booked at 2:30 AM on short notice, and a terrace directly outside our window had extremely loud music. The receptionist said it was “only allowed until 5.” Then, 40 minutes before checkout, we were woken and told to finally check out. The room was very dirty and hadn’t been cleaned beforehand. There was also a wire stuck in the electrical outlet, and touching it could likely give you an electric shock.

The rooms are nice, but the location was awful and we could hear everything. There were shouts from people of color and gunshots in the street, and the windows don’t block sound. They also let people use the place as a brothel, not just for travelers. Absolutely awful.