Hotel-Club CHACHALACAS: End of the saga
by alza
The desk clerk from the night before was still there, and a young woman was in the background. I told my story about the guy with the beer and said that I had really not slept well with the worry he caused me. The desk clerk spoke with a heavy lisp and was extremely mannered, flaying his arms about so I couldn't read his lips. It made it hard for me to understand him. He apologised profusely and promised me that this wouldn't happen again, saying that the young man and his group had left the hotel. When I still wanted to leave, the woman came up and spoke for the Hotel, offering me a better room in the Hotel itself. I asked to see it. As the clerk was taking me there, he mentioned that he'd see what he could do to get his boss to give me the better room at the same promotional price I had been quoted initially for the motel-type room (which is normally 860 Pesos but had been offered to me for 680 Pesos.) I stopped him right there in his tracks and went to the woman to get her assurance that of course I wouldn't be asked to pay more! She said it went without saying.
The 2nd room was some steps down from Reception, at ground level. Already didn't like that idea of going down a set of stairs to reach the ground... The room was a Junior suite at the end of a mile-long corridor, with living-room apart from the bedroom but only furnished with a long sofa and a chair, with patio doors giving out on an wall-enclosed courtyard. The TV is in the bedroom... The question of why anyone would choose to sit on a vinyl couch and stare at the walls in a bare living-room crossed my tired mind. Clerk opened all the windows to show me around, it looked okay so I took it. But as soon as he'd gone, I realised that not one window would close, including the patio door. Rust and beach sand had done their work. I went back to say I didn't feel safe there and that's when the manager told him to give me the Master Suite on the 2nd Floor.
After re-arranging my stuff in the third room, I fell asleep while dressing for the huge & beautiful empty pool in the main courtyard. When I woke up around Noon, I finally decided to hit the beach, which is just across the mud street outside the back gates of the Hotel. I wrote about CHACHALACAS the place in General Tips so that's it as far as the Hotel CHACHALACAS goes.
Big rooms. 3 bath-size towels, one bath-rug, 2 mini-soaps and 2 small bottles of water in the Master Suites. No Cable TV anywhere. No mobile phone signal but I did see "Emergency Only" on my phone screen when standing at the Reception Desk.
The paper bracelet which the Staff fixes on your wrist after you've paid on arrival allows you to go in and out of the complex without worry. But I hated it, it even bothered me enough to keep me from sleeping well.
Still, if you ever HAVE to go to CHACHALACAS, you might consider the Hotel-Club Chachalacas since it's the best I saw in the village. The Special Category hotel that I had enquired about from Veracruz is right beside it, I saw it and it looks worse, all for 1,100 Pesos. But then, they include a coffee and a toast, which my hotel charged for. And now that I think back, I thought they'd charged 18 Pesos for that breakfast... which would be $1.80 and fine. But actually, I think it was 180 Pesos. Jeeze, I paid 18 bucks for one small cup of coffee with Carnation milk and 2 toasts!! And I had specifically asked for ONE toast! I was taken!
Lucky for me, I met a gal from the State capital, Xalapa and we'll be keeping in touch.
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