Lali's House

We booked four nights at Lalis House, but it was locked when we arrived at noon on our check-in day. We knocked, called and sent messages on WhatsApp and email for half an hour with no reply. Since the house was some distance from the center and there was nothing nearby, we took our suitcases to lunch. At about 3:30 p.m. it was still locked, and after another half hour of knocking and calling with no answer, we found another place nearby, CASA STRELA. They kindly gave us a room for two nights, the only nights they had available. Later, while walking in town, we spotted HOTEL BLUE SKY, the hotel named in the Lalis House WhatsApp message, and asked about the situation. They said it had the same owner, who didn’t know why Lalis House hadn’t opened or where the person in charge was. They apologized and offered us a room for the next three nights at the same rate we’d booked at Lalis. In the morning, though, Adla Pires Montero told us her colleague had made a mistake and there were only two nights available. She asked us to leave our bags and said she’d try to arrange something for when we came back. Later she messaged that she couldn’t fix it and could only offer two nights. When we returned, she said she’d booked three nights at another hotel to spare us more changes, and the agreed two nights at HOTEL BLUE SKY were no longer an option. We asked for the complaints book and she refused. She said she’d send Lalis’s book to the new hotel, but it never arrived. At Porto do Sol, we were told the booking was only for two nights because they had no room on Friday night into Saturday morning, a national holiday. They urged us to look quickly because there was hardly any hotel availability. We messaged Mrs. Alda at HOTEL BLUE SKY about the problem. She read it but never replied. We still don’t know why Lalis House was closed with nobody there to let us in, and they never contacted us to explain or offer an alternative. This happened over Holy Week, when occupancy was high, and we spent four days in Tarrafal moving among three accommodations, losing time each day searching for somewhere to stay and shifting our bags.