February in Punta Cana
Submitted: February 26, 2011
Stayed: February 2011
Some friends and I recently rented a villa during early February and truly enjoyed our vacation there. The weather was beautiful daily - averaging 84 degrees and sunny each day, and only with an occasional rain storm each night around 8p.
The villa itself is very well kept; we found it to be impeccably clean and well represented on the website. There is also 24 hour security, and we always felt safe. One of the reason we chose to rent a villa with a full kitchen was so that we could eat breakfast and prepare lunch to take with us to the beach each day, which was easy to do. However, there was no cooler as stated in the rental information. There's no internet in the villa itself; you have to take your laptop into the clubhouse in order to pick up the wireless signal. This also requires a network key that you must obtain in order to use the connection. There's also no phone in the villa; the property manager can lend you a cell phone to use for your stay, but you must buy a phone card to use it.
The phone becomes a necessity for transportation. If you do not rent a car, it can be difficult to get around Punta Cana. The property manager will drive you where you need to go for $3 a ride, but this is contingent upon you feeling comfortable calling and setting up this accomadation. Should you choose to use a local taxi, it is easily a $10 ride, even if you're just going half a mile. The nearest area with shops/restaurants is the Palma Real Shopping Village, but it's over a mile and at night, the walk is potentially dangerous due to windy roads that are not well lit. Also, this is clearly a mall targeted at travellers, and you'll find mostly american stores and restaurants. So if you're not planning on cooking for yourself nightly, you must either choose to walk, obtain a ride, or pay for a day pass at the resort. The day pass price has increased to $40 from $25.
The beach is easily a mile away, and the tram to the beach only runs Friday-Sunday. The other days, you must either walk or pay the property manager for a ride. If you do not pay for a day pass to IFA, you cannot even go into the resort. You must walk down to the beach on the access road and walk over to the chairs from there. Chairs are hard to find after 10:30a or so. There's a couple of cute restaurants on the beach - highly recommend Domingo's - the food is great, beer is cold, and it's very inexpensive.
Steve and Yndira were very easy to work with; we had emailed ahead of time and tr
Owner's Response: We are happy that Amy and her friends were able to enjoy our beautiful villa, the most breathtaking beach and local restaurants in the area. However, it would be very important to highlight that we do offer amenities that no other property owners in Punta Cana offers: First of all, it is extremely rare to find phone service within any villa rentals in Punta Cana. For this reason we do provide a free complimentary Dominican cellular phone where the renters can receive free phone calls (a phone card $1 - $5 is required}. We simply inform our guests to pay for the minutes that they desire to use. At the end of the day, we want our guests to avoid the extremely high roaming charges on their cell phones.
A cooler, a BBQ grille and other special items are available upon request. We even have a crib and baby items available when they are requested in advance.
Although we do recommend car rental in the website, we usually discourage our renters to have this expense because our property manager Yves is always happy and available to drive our renters for ½ the price of a tourist taxi. He recommends places in the town, tours and goes above and beyond for the renters.
Regarding Internet service in Punta Cana, most renters have to go to restaurants to be able to use their laptops: however, 50 steps away from the villa there is Free Wi-Fi at the pool. We also offer internet service in the villa for a small fee. Again, many of our amenities are listed as available. We do recommend our guests to confirm their needs prior to arrival in order for us to accommodate their requests. We take pride in our personalized service and make every effort to “Win Guests for Life”?
Yndira and Steve
Helpful votes: 7/7
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