Barcelo Capella Beach Resort Rating: 2.5 Pearls

Boca Chica, Dominican Republic

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Lively crowd at The Outdoor Beach Pool

The cheap rates draw as many locals as tourists, but the heavy local mix means that Spanish is the primary language spoken here. Evening entertainment is primarily in Spanish and instructions for organized activities are too. Translation: English is hard to come by.

The rooms and the beach, which is littered with cigarette butts, are among the worst in the D.R., but the grounds and building generally look spiffy. However, the supercheap rates are best evidenced by the filthy, ant-ridden food that tastes like it was cooked in a septic tank. (There are multiple reports on TripAdvisor of people getting sick.)

Still, it’s a lively resort, and some guests manage to have a good time. In the small, square pool near the beach, groups of women participate in water aerobics, doing jumping jacks to pop hits from the '80s and '90s, including the Caribbean favorite “Who Let the Dogs Out”. The same tunes can be heard in certain sections of the cigarette-littered beach, where guests play a quiet round of bocce ball, but not in the designated "quiet" pool where children have a ball cruising down the waterslide.

Throughout the day, the entertainment staff arranges various activities, like poolside obstacle courses. This involves sprinting around the pool, running up a set of stairs covered in a wet towel, doing 10 jumping jacks at the top of the stairs, diving into a shallow pool, swimming across, hopping out of the pool to run in place for 10 high steps, jumping into another shallow pool without belly flopping, and getting out and finishing the circuit with 10 push-ups. Fastest guy who doesn’t split his head open wins.

For just $10 more (even closer to Santo Domingo), I suggest the Oasis Hamaca, which has significantly cleaner rooms, infinitely better food, and a much cleaner beach.

Tiny front desk

Check-in took 35 minutes: 20 minutes of waiting in line at the 6-foot-wide check-in desk and 15 minutes of back and forth with paperwork before the receptionist gave me my key.

At 8:45 a.m., a housekeeper barged into my room without so much as a knock. When she saw me changing, she slammed the door.

I spoke to multiple guests who complained of significant maintenance issues that were never resolved. One person had a flood in her room from a toilet that overflowed. When she complained, someone temporarily fixed the problem and mopped up the water, but the room flooded again the next day.

The service at the buffet is uncommonly rude and inattentive (one waiter fully ignored me when I asked for more coffee), but like anywhere, the bartenders are friendlier.

View on a Larger Map

Juan Dolio hasn’t really taken off like Punta Cana or Playa Dorada, largely because the beach just doesn’t match up.

There are a few restaurants in town, including three Italian places and a couple of espresso bars, which are a much-needed change from the Barcelo's super-cheap grub.

Littered, but calm beachstrip

Unlike the white, powdery Bavaro Beach that seems to stretch on forever in Punta Cana, the Barcelo's beach has hints of turquoise, but is littered with cigarette butts, juice cartons, plastic cups, and bottles of water. There's also seaweed at the waterline and the sand is pockmarked with lots of crushed shells that hurt bare feet.

On the plus side, parents can appreciate the very calm water, thanks to a protective reef.

There's no drink service on the beach, but there are plenty of lounge chairs to go around (very few with umbrellas, though).

The souvenir peddlers get especially annoying here -- at times more so than in Punta Cana. I spotted one pseudo-chef walking down the beach -- with buckets of raw chicken, a jar of salsa, and an old bleach can stuffed with utensils-- hoping to sell tourists on an impromptu lunch. One guest reported being offered pot.

Small, unused Fitness Center

There are two pools on the property, but both are incredibly small by Dominican all-inclusive standards. The main pool, adjacent to the main buffet, has a small waterfall and swim-up bar. The other pool is at the back of the property and has a water slide that some local schoolchildren loved. Strangely, this pool is supposed to be the "quiet" pool.

There’s a small, unused fitness center that contains two old treadmills, one elliptical, and a set of weights. The fluorescent lighting is bad, but the lack of air-conditioning is far worse. Outside the gym, there’s a fairly popular pool table.

There is a designated sports center, though I use the term loosely. It has two volleyball courts, a basketball court, and a seemingly abandoned minigolf course lined with splintered benches.

There's also a spa on the property that offers basic services like manicures, pedicures, and massages, but I didn't see anyone there and didn't speak with any guests who had used the facilities.

Fortunately, there is Wi-Fi access throughout the property and it's only $10 for a 24-hour pass (a decent deal, compared to the price-gouging rates at some of the other resorts). There are two computers for guests to use ($8 per hour), but be careful where you put your fingers -- I saw a peacock perched on one of the keyboards.

The nightly entertainment is above average -- quality live merengue bands and popular (though maybe a bit overeroticized) dance ensembles are the norm. However, the evening’s master of ceremonies speaks only in Spanish.

Small Kids' Clubhouse

The only kids here during my stay came from a local school. They had a blast on the waterslide in the far section of the quiet pool, but there’s not much else for kids on-site.

There’s a small kids' clubhouse without air conditioning; it has a kids' pool, but I never saw any kids there while I was at the resort. (The only person there was a staff member watching an old TV mounted on the wall.) There are some games on the shelves, an old foosball table, a few deflated balloons hanging from the walls, and several dirty tables – but this is not a lively place.

One parent remarked that the beach, while not the cleanest, is calm thanks to a rocky reef located a few hundred feet from shore. However, the beaches in Bayahibe are equally calm -- and cleaner -- but more than an hour away.

Clean and well-cared for lawns

The lawns are clean and well-cared for, but that's about it.

Rows of tiny ants crawled along the baseboards of my room, around the sink in my bathroom, and even inside my bed. The inside of the toilet needed a serious scrubbing and disinfecting, as did the grout in the shower.

As a result of a broken air conditioner, the dampness in my room made it feel even dirtier than it looked. Between the moldy lampshades, the brown-tinged bath towels, and the smell of cigarette smoke drifting up to the balcony from my downstairs neighbor, I tried to spend as little time as possible inside the room.

The bathroom adjacent to the main buffet smelled of dirty diapers, and some surface-level investigating turned up just that. On the other side of the resort, one of the public bathrooms was overflowing with toilet paper, some clogging the toilet, some soggy and draped over the toilet seat. Neither of the bathrooms is ventilated, so that smell just lingers.

This is to say nothing of the cigarette butts and washed-up juice cartons littering the beach, or the clumped seaweed around the waterline. Or the two ants that crawled up my plate and into my pineapple at the main buffet.

French Onion Soup at Chez Fontaine

The Barcelo resorts have worse food than every other Dominican resort. Our reporting staff knowingly grumbles whenever they get an assignment at any of these places. The food here is no different, and every guest agrees. Common complaints include: "Same thing every day," "poor food," and "nothing's ever hot."

Every day I subsisted largely on fruit, which includes a decent selection of pineapple, papaya, mango, guanabana, oranges, and grapefruit. The salad bar has a bowl of cucumbers, another of cabbage, and a third of tomatoes more green than red. There’s only one container of olive oil and vinegar to be shared among everyone in the entire dining hall, plus the two cats that roam freely throughout the buffet. Other salads include one made with hot dogs and sour cream, and another with pasta and warm mayo.

Kid-friendly options like burgers and fries are available, but the burgers are typically swimming in a pool of tomato sauce. Individual pizza slices are piled up in a tray, but they look like the frozen kind, as if they were popped into the oven for about a half-hour too long.

For dinner, a decent standby is the made-to-order pasta station, which includes four kinds of pasta and four sauces, plus an assortment of toppings such as ham, onions, tomatoes, and, during my visit, moldy Parmesan cheese. For most guests, the pasta bar is the go-to choice -- there is always a line of at least five people waiting to be served.

The cheese tray, even at the beginning of dinner, looks like it has been lying out for days. Some cheeses are dried out, while others -- like the slices of what looked to be American -- are completely soft and goopy. There’s no ice beneath the cheese tray and no cooler inside the buffet.

Even the seafood dishes are served at room temperature -- diners beware!

Chez Fontaine, a French à la carte restaurant that's on-site, but not a part of the all-inclusive package, offers a slightly improved menu, but not by much. Many of its menu items end up in the buffet the next day.

Get to breakfast early. The orange juice will still taste like sweetened Kool-Aid, but at least the fruit isn't turning brown and the french toast is less stale. By 10 a.m., the breakfast buffet is a sorry state.

Wine options at Chez Fontaine

The all-inclusive cocktails at Barcelo Capella are some of the worst in the D.R. Premade mixes stand in for fresh juices and the only liquor included in the price of the room comes from generic brands otherwise not available in stores. I saw the industrial jug of fruit-juice concentrate regularly hauled out and poured into the slushy machines, which churned out a syrupy-sweet pina colada. A bar menu with a wide selection of cocktails rests on every table, but I highly recommend keeping the orders simple. When I asked for a Bloody Mary, the bartender looked stumped and after a few minutes sheepishly pushed across the table what tasted like a V8 with well vodka. Fortunately, the always cold Presidente draft never disappoints. Or pay a couple more bucks for top-shelf liquor: Dewar's, Tanqueray, Absolut, Stoli, and Smirnoff are offered at any of the bars for an extra $2. After-dinner liqueurs like Bailey's and Kahlua are also available and run $2 to $3.

Dirty and ant-ridden Deluxe Room

In-room ant colonies and barely cleaned surfaces make these rooms thoroughly unpleasant. The hallways may be clean and the thick wooden door frames are a nice touch, but I couldn’t find a single guest who was satisfied with his or her room. My hot, damp room had a significant number of ants living in the corner. At the end of the night, I found ants crawling on my laptop, on the TV, and all over one of the double beds -- the only safe zone was the other double bed (and just barely). My room was in the 4000 section of the resort; these rooms are supposedly the best, which isn’t saying much.

Beds are covered with thin, teal comforters. In my room, the dust ruffles frayed at the seams and were edged in dirt. The half-lamps plastered on the cantaloupe-colored wall were molding around the edges. It's possible the lampshade on the dresser had already been replaced -- it still had plastic wrapping on it. Classy.

The Daewoo television, which had a few English stations like CNN and ESPN, was covered in handprints from either greasy foods or greasy sunscreen.

Housekeeping must've been asked to ration the sodas and water in the free minibar -- only two Cokes and two bottles of much-needed water.

In the dark, poorly lit bathroom, the toilet barely flushed and leaked all over the floor (other guests complained about the same problem). Some of the grout in the shower was brown.

The hotel provides few toiletries, just some soaps double-sealed in plastic and a wall-mounted dispenser of no-name shampoo in the shower.