Ranchería Utta

The menu is okay, and the staff are friendly. It’s a basic place, but it has what you need to unwind for a few days. Rooms and bathrooms get dusty from the steady desert sand, and the electricity is limited to nighttime. I’d stay two nights at most and spend as much time as possible walking around and at the beach.

Be careful and get a receipt, or pick somewhere else in the village. We slept in beach hammocks for two days to keep costs down, and thought this accommodation was a good project, but there were probably communication problems. We believed we’d paid for two hammocks for two nights when checking in. On the last evening, two employees came asking for the same amount again, so we paid twice. If we’d known the hammocks cost $80 for two nights, we’d have stayed somewhere else. Being charged twice also seemed extremely strange. It wasn’t worth it for us.

Really enjoyed it here. Sleeping in the comfortable hammocks right by the beach was lovely. Everything was clean, the staff were extremely friendly, and they even took care of our extra requests at the restaurant.

We came with expotur expecting an enclosed cabin, which is also what their website lists, but our cabin was open at the top. There were loads of mosquitoes at night, the room wasn’t cleaned properly, and there was old underwear on the door. The sheets were stained, too. At breakfast and lunch, you had to fight the flies for your food. We walked through the neighboring small town and didn’t see the same number of flies elsewhere. It seems like an easy fix. Staff told our tour operator they were in the middle of fumigation, but I think they’re just being cheap. The beach here is rocky compared with the town’s beach. Our tour operator works with them because “they are away from noise,” but we could hear loud music and people talking at night. The cabin was open to the air and had no mosquito net. There were lots of staff, but many were just hanging around on their phones. Our driver told us to preorder dinner at 5:30 so it would arrive at 7:30. We asked for ours at 6:30, but it was ready at 7:20. We also saw staff hanging around outside someone else’s room while the occupants weren’t there. There are plenty of other places to stay in the small town, including some with wifi. I’m not sure what benefits this place offers. Don’t trust the positive reviews, things have definitely changed since the pandemic.