El Delfín Verde Platja d’Aro

We picked Valldaro this year after staying at a different campsite near Platje D'Aro in previous years. The nearby supermarkets and easier walk into town and the shopping areas suited us. The grounds cover a huge area, and it seemed to me like two camps had been joined together. The campground is lovely, and the site and facilities were very clean, largely thanks to the adult workers. A few shrubs or marked pitches might help reduce the sand and dust and give people more privacy. There’s a lot this place could offer, but management needs to train staff properly and have someone with authority on site. Campers shouldn’t have to police the grounds themselves. We had trouble with noise on three occasions in our first 8-10 days and reported it through the app. There was also disruption every day, daytime and early evening. We chose a shaded pitch near facilities because, at other campsites, staff patrol those areas at night to prevent people returning from bars and clubs from gathering and turning them into little nightclub raves. Here we didn’t see or hear staff responding. Cleaning staff seemed to have no way to communicate with security or reception, and they looked the other way. By the time we spotted security or someone responsible, the revellers had already gone. We ended up stressed and uneasy at bedtime. The pool had plenty of staff around, but they were young and often let guests leave rubbish behind, which also seemed like a training and management problem. Our first visit to the bar and restaurant was a bad start. We arrived at 21:00 and were told we could still order, but waited a long time to place the order and longer to get the food. By then it was dark. Halfway through our chicken strips, we found they were still raw. The young staff member handling the complaint immediately said he was from another restaurant and just helping that evening. As far as I knew, there was no manager or other person in charge there on Saturday night. We weren’t charged for the food, but were disgusted and went straight to the toilets to throw up what we’d eaten. Fortunately there were no further effects, but we didn’t eat or drink anything else from the campsite bar or restaurants. In the last couple of days, the pool water didn’t seem very good in the late afternoons. After we got back to Belgium, all of us became ill with vomiting and diarrhoea. Our doctor’s laboratory test has since confirmed Cryptosporidium. I’d be interested to know how many other people got sick. We stayed from 22/7-5/8/23.