Ribai Hotels - Barranquilla

Handy for the shopping centers nearby, and the service was good. Nice place.

You can get to tourist spots easily from here, and public transportation is good. There’s also informal commerce at very cheap prices, though the location itself isn’t great, with homeless people outside and awful streets. The rooms were nice and the service excellent, but some of our belongings were stolen from inside the hotel room. We called the front desk, but neither the manager nor receptionist did anything to help. They could have checked the cameras or asked the cleaning staff, but they didn’t. At least they refunded us money to cover the stolen item.

Right downtown, and I really enjoyed both the room and the pool.

The hotel staff and cleaners were lovely, but my experience with the restaurant was awful. We ate pasta for several days because we were trying to stick to basic foods. We got sick on the first day and thought it might have been something we’d eaten earlier. On day four I ordered pasta again, and the bread was covered in black mould. I’ve had symptoms from the mould for six days now, and they still haven’t stopped. I told the restaurant staff, but they said nothing and didn’t even apologize. At one point there was a dead rat on the floor outside the restaurant, and staff walked right past it. This was the most expensive place we stayed during our five-month trip through Central and South America. The sickness hasn’t gone away. Breakfast was very, very unfortunate: two kinds of fruit, scrambled eggs, and yams prepared four ways. I still think about it and cringe. Check your food every time, even if it’s toasted and you’re really hungry.