Casa Marina Beach Reef Resort Rating: 2.5 Pearls

Cabarete and Sosua, Dominican Republic

Lining up for drinks at the bar

Unlike most hotels on the Dominican Republic's north coast, Casa Marina draws a significant number of American guests. There were also Canadian, French, and British guests, and everyone was especially friendly. More than once I heard, "Hey there, neighbor. Why don't you get a drink with us?" The pool saw couples, little kids, lone retirees, and Dominican families posing for wedding photographs. Bars stood at regular intervals -- a drink is never more than a two-minute walk away.

Long palm fronds grow along the hallway walls, giving the property a slight ‘’in-the-wild’’ motif. Frequent power outages completed the look.

But Casa Marina is also one of the loudest resorts in the Caribbean. Being close to one of the D.R.’s major highways, from my room I listened to cars, trucks, buses, revving motor scooters, incessant jack-hammering, and pickup trucks equipped with huge loudspeakers advertising "Plantanos! Plantanos!" Along the tiled hallways, I could hear every guest that walked by, every 3 a.m. drunken conversation. Reviewers on TripAdvisor complained about the same. Relaxation can get tricky, and this was especially true during my stay. Construction crews lined the beach to work on the Los Cocos bar. Debris and other industrial garbage were strewn along the sand.

When my cab arrived, a bellman greeted me and took my bags. Another brought me a rum drink before I was standing completely upright. Front-desk personnel were fast and efficient. They ably handled a steady check-in stream early in the afternoon and then took care of a flock of guests checking out. I attribute this in large part to the staff’s fluency in English – a rarity in the Dominican Republic.

A phone request for extra towels took a bit longer than expected (about 20 minutes), but the person who delivered them was very apologetic. A later request for bottled water was answered in just five minutes.

View on a Larger Map

The hotel is in the heart of downtown Sosua, a 15-minute, $10-$15 cab ride from the Puerto Plata airport. Walking a few steps off the property leads one to Sosua's endless string of small bars, restaurants, confrontational motor scooter taxis, and constantly soliciting prostitutes. (Prostitution is legal in the D.R. -- and a major part of the tourism industry). The hotel's main entrance is two doors down from Sosua's Jewish Museum, which was so close that the museum was featured on the resort map. A baseball field across the street featured nightly amateur-level softball.

The property is built along a long, white beach, which is open for public use (like all beaches in the D.R.). The lively beach town of Cabarete, the Caribbean's kite-surfing capital, is a 15-minute, $15 cab ride away.

The beach is beautiful -- wide, uninterrupted runs of sand with views of faraway bluffs. An on-site, PADI-certified scuba operation offers an array of trips. A beach volleyball court, used mostly by the staff, stood near a table tennis area. Couples played many hours of Ping-Pong.

The Garden View Room

All rooms are pretty outdated, and the features are meager. There are no radios, alarm clocks, Internet hookups, or even mini-fridges (which virtually every other hotel has). The TVs are standard-screen, 21-inch Samsungs, and in my room, the remote wasn’t able to turn the TV on or off. Manipulating the power required getting out of bed.

The bathroom in my standard room (No. 131) smelled awful – it was as if a corrosive, wet mold had taken hold. Fortunately, the air conditioning helped remedy the odor. The stains and grime on the bathroom fixtures and floor were uncomfortable. A low ceiling -- about seven feet tall -- did not make things any better. There’s no hairdryer, and all toiletries were from Ahmsa Marina, the hotel’s corporate chain.

The beds, however, were extremely soft and yielding. They made for a great night's sleep.

The pool

The hotel has three pools: the main pool, a kid’s pool, and a slightly smaller pool. The main pool is a massive structure with two basketball hoops (full court, anyone?) and a volleyball net. It’s highlighted by an overhead sprinkler that stays on even after the pool closes for the evening. There’s also a smaller, more intimate pool, but it’s hardly small. It had a spouting fountain and was surrounded by ample beach chairs. Some balconies opened directly onto the pool plaza.

The hotel store

The spa, called the "Massage Center," had just three rooms: one for a single-person massage, one for a couples massage, and then another single massage station.

There are various clothing, jewelry, and gift shops on-site, so that guests can get marked-up alcohol and T-shirts without leaving the property.

The business center was small and simple, with four HP computers separated by privacy dividers. Wireless Internet was not available in the rooms, though there’s Wi-Fi in the lobby for $5 for an hour, $3 for 30 minutes, and $2 for 15 minutes.

There’s also a medical center on-site, in the same corridor as the tour desk. It accepts all travel and personal insurance and is operated from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and then again from 3 to 6 p.m. Laundry service and room service were not available. Outside laundry services were a short walk from the property.

Like most Dominican resorts, though, it has no gym. The resort also lacks some basics like laundry services and tennis courts.

Organized kids' activities begin at 10 a.m. and run until lunchtime, then start up again at 3 p.m. until dinner. During my stay, the children's pool had lots of leaves in the water. Kids mostly stuck to the main pools, where they could splash more adults.

Guests transfixed by the evening entertainment

The amphitheater gets packed at night. During my stay, the entertainment staff spent hours performing a "Broadway Highlights" show. The house watched finely choreographed (albeit lip-synched) renditions of numbers from Grease, The Rocky Horror Show, and West Side Story. Lurid costumes and a sexually ambiguous cast (men played many of the female parts) only pleased the guests further.

The Calipso Disco opens at 10 p.m. each night. The one-room club was relatively crowded -- 20 to 30 guests rotated in throughout the night -- and it played clubbed-up merengue tunes. A fog machine poured white steam from the far end of the pitch-black room all the way to the cash bar, drowning the dancing and kissing couples in a rolling haze.

The rooms are old and worn, and based on the muddy hallways, cleanliness is a low priority at the hotel. In my room, the bathroom faucets and fixtures were caked in mildew and grime. The mirror above the sink wore stray dots of caulking. The blue tile floor was stained and chipped, and the pipe under the sink was rusted. The wall below the sink was thoroughly stained, and the sink was cracked and stained brown. The tub had mold growing over the caulking.

Line at the buffet

Dinner at the El Batey buffet was practically a feeding frenzy, with long lines and heavy competition for tables. Many guests felt the food was decent, but they preferred the a la carte restaurants.

At Sea Scape, the seafood a la carte, customers can choose from a number of fresh lobsters. This is the hotel's most popular restaurant -- guests spoke at length about the quality of the fish. Luiggi is the Italian a la carte. El Jalapeno serves a fast-food buffet during the day and a la carte Mexican dishes for dinner.