I forgot to ask if they had a kid’s club!! There were plenty of kids though, so they're certainly welcome. 
The Intercontinental Presidente is a beautiful resort – truly. We had a nice room that was in the southern part of the property (5230) – very quiet – but it was quite a walk to the pier to get our morning diving boat.
There were rarely very many people on the beach – which seemed odd to me – but they seemed to be in the family pool (yes, there is a family pool and an adult pool) or in the restaurant that is on the beach. The ‘family’ pool is the one with the infinity pool view. The adult pool is nestled in the middle of a courtyard with no ocean view.
Everything here is nice quality. The robes, towels, the fact that their trolleys are all on rubber tires rather than hard wheels so they don’t make a bunch of noise going down the hallway (and I felt like a loser when we left the resort dragging our noisy bags behind us – didn’t want to call someone to come get our bags).
The restaurants on property are exorbitantly expensive. We travel quite a bit, but we have found a way to do so ‘on the cheap’. This trip was a splurge to see just how nice it was. One night there was a cabana filled with 20ish folks who had just ordered a bottle of Patron and glasses with lime – and this seemed to be the ‘norm’ – I’d read these cabanas are $500/day. I think most of the folks who come here have the money to not worry about the price. Us, on the other hand, left the property all but one night to go to dinner elsewhere (or ordered out) – and saved money even after paying taxi fare. The one night we had dinner on property I couldn’t get our waiter’s attention to order dessert as he was fawning all over this gorgeous solo woman at the table next to ours! (I wanted to tell the young man that she was SO far out of his league that he may as well schmooze with us to get a better tip!)
Each day the room mini-fridge is restocked with four small bottles of water, one diet coke, one regular coke, one Tecate and one Tecate Light. You also get one large bottle of water, two caffeinated coffee pods and two decaf pods daily (and creamer/sugar). If you leave a large bottle of water that's barely used they will take it away and replace it with a new bottle. This seemed wasteful to me, so we'd refill the coffee reservoir and chug it rather than leave it to be replaced. I loved that the beach towels were available not only by the pool but down by our end of the resort - and when I was waiting for our dive boat I needed to exchange my damp towel for a new one and the life guard volunteered to hike up to get me a new one. At other resorts I might have been told there would be a charge if I lost it or that they're not allowed off property. This was a nice perk, just not having to worry about it (and yes, I brought it back!).
We learned – re-learned – that even though we say ‘we’re going to do the things that normal people do on vacation – lay on the beach and jump in the pool and order a drink poolside’ – we don’t. We go out on a boat that gets us back around 3:30. We have time to rinse gear, shower and then go find dinner. It really doesn’t matter if we’re staying at a 5 star or 3 star place, we’re not going to take advantage of all the cool stuff. Sigh. And the pillows were hard – the bed and linens were great – but a lumpy, hard pillow made it uncomfortable.
This property had two nice beaches. We did one shore dive – and I swear, I insisted we do it so I could report back about the quality of the shore dive, staff, etc! We did our entry from the beach – easy, but since we’re not used to it it’s still a little bit of a challenge. It was a nice dive. I think we saw 5 different eels – golden and spotted – juvenile sargeant majors close to shore – there’s a sunken barge right off shore that’s home to a school of fish (maybe snapper?) – peacock flounder – arrow crab – stone fish. All in all, a nice dive. The latest they want you back to shore is 7, and I think the latest they said we could pick up the tanks was 6:30? You can also do your dive off the north pier on the property, and I suspect the reef might be better up there as it’s really close to Paradise (Paraiso). The dive shop will drop your tanks there for you to use, so you don’t have to lug them up that way. The dive shop seemed a little disorganized – or laissez faire – we couldn’t charge the $10 per tank to the room (dive shop isn’t owned by the hotel) and they were fine with us coming back to pay later. When I went back to pay later they didn’t ask for my name or room number – so I volunteered it. But nice folks.
We booked our stay through American Airlines vacations and have written notification that we were not to be charged for resort fees, but we were charged $22/day in resort fees. We’ll challenge that with my credit card company – but watch for that. If you order delivery they will not allow a moto to come to the entrance. They have to park at the gate and walk your food to the entrance – I know they’re trying to keep the noise level down but I felt sorry for the guy from Rock n Java.
So, would we go to Presidente again? Probably not – especially while we’re diving. We paid a lot of money for benefits we didn’t have time to take advantage of. We’re just too aware of how far we can stretch a dollar – and frankly, it’s like a game for us to do so – that it’s difficult to spend the extra money for the luxury. We sleep better at Casa del Mar (with our blow up air mattresses) and our gear dries faster (we took home damp gear – could NOT get it dry in our room at Presidente – no fans in the room).
Diving with Jungle Divers, with Stephan (not our regular Stef because he was on vacation) on the Charro boat was great, as always. I still can’t believe we see a new critter every trip. This time we saw a couple of new ones – a purpling flabellina and another nudi that I haven’t yet ID’d.
Restaurants we tried that were new to us: New Especias and Guidos - both Italian and both good. R preferred Guidos and I preferred New Especias! Blue Angel and Rock n Java were great, as always.
I have such a difficult time adding photos on ScubaBoard that I'm going to try to add a link to a google album I created. I hope it works. Here's the link. Crossing my fingers.
The Intercontinental Presidente is a beautiful resort – truly. We had a nice room that was in the southern part of the property (5230) – very quiet – but it was quite a walk to the pier to get our morning diving boat.
There were rarely very many people on the beach – which seemed odd to me – but they seemed to be in the family pool (yes, there is a family pool and an adult pool) or in the restaurant that is on the beach. The ‘family’ pool is the one with the infinity pool view. The adult pool is nestled in the middle of a courtyard with no ocean view.
Everything here is nice quality. The robes, towels, the fact that their trolleys are all on rubber tires rather than hard wheels so they don’t make a bunch of noise going down the hallway (and I felt like a loser when we left the resort dragging our noisy bags behind us – didn’t want to call someone to come get our bags).
The restaurants on property are exorbitantly expensive. We travel quite a bit, but we have found a way to do so ‘on the cheap’. This trip was a splurge to see just how nice it was. One night there was a cabana filled with 20ish folks who had just ordered a bottle of Patron and glasses with lime – and this seemed to be the ‘norm’ – I’d read these cabanas are $500/day. I think most of the folks who come here have the money to not worry about the price. Us, on the other hand, left the property all but one night to go to dinner elsewhere (or ordered out) – and saved money even after paying taxi fare. The one night we had dinner on property I couldn’t get our waiter’s attention to order dessert as he was fawning all over this gorgeous solo woman at the table next to ours! (I wanted to tell the young man that she was SO far out of his league that he may as well schmooze with us to get a better tip!)
Each day the room mini-fridge is restocked with four small bottles of water, one diet coke, one regular coke, one Tecate and one Tecate Light. You also get one large bottle of water, two caffeinated coffee pods and two decaf pods daily (and creamer/sugar). If you leave a large bottle of water that's barely used they will take it away and replace it with a new bottle. This seemed wasteful to me, so we'd refill the coffee reservoir and chug it rather than leave it to be replaced. I loved that the beach towels were available not only by the pool but down by our end of the resort - and when I was waiting for our dive boat I needed to exchange my damp towel for a new one and the life guard volunteered to hike up to get me a new one. At other resorts I might have been told there would be a charge if I lost it or that they're not allowed off property. This was a nice perk, just not having to worry about it (and yes, I brought it back!).
We learned – re-learned – that even though we say ‘we’re going to do the things that normal people do on vacation – lay on the beach and jump in the pool and order a drink poolside’ – we don’t. We go out on a boat that gets us back around 3:30. We have time to rinse gear, shower and then go find dinner. It really doesn’t matter if we’re staying at a 5 star or 3 star place, we’re not going to take advantage of all the cool stuff. Sigh. And the pillows were hard – the bed and linens were great – but a lumpy, hard pillow made it uncomfortable.
This property had two nice beaches. We did one shore dive – and I swear, I insisted we do it so I could report back about the quality of the shore dive, staff, etc! We did our entry from the beach – easy, but since we’re not used to it it’s still a little bit of a challenge. It was a nice dive. I think we saw 5 different eels – golden and spotted – juvenile sargeant majors close to shore – there’s a sunken barge right off shore that’s home to a school of fish (maybe snapper?) – peacock flounder – arrow crab – stone fish. All in all, a nice dive. The latest they want you back to shore is 7, and I think the latest they said we could pick up the tanks was 6:30? You can also do your dive off the north pier on the property, and I suspect the reef might be better up there as it’s really close to Paradise (Paraiso). The dive shop will drop your tanks there for you to use, so you don’t have to lug them up that way. The dive shop seemed a little disorganized – or laissez faire – we couldn’t charge the $10 per tank to the room (dive shop isn’t owned by the hotel) and they were fine with us coming back to pay later. When I went back to pay later they didn’t ask for my name or room number – so I volunteered it. But nice folks.
We booked our stay through American Airlines vacations and have written notification that we were not to be charged for resort fees, but we were charged $22/day in resort fees. We’ll challenge that with my credit card company – but watch for that. If you order delivery they will not allow a moto to come to the entrance. They have to park at the gate and walk your food to the entrance – I know they’re trying to keep the noise level down but I felt sorry for the guy from Rock n Java.
So, would we go to Presidente again? Probably not – especially while we’re diving. We paid a lot of money for benefits we didn’t have time to take advantage of. We’re just too aware of how far we can stretch a dollar – and frankly, it’s like a game for us to do so – that it’s difficult to spend the extra money for the luxury. We sleep better at Casa del Mar (with our blow up air mattresses) and our gear dries faster (we took home damp gear – could NOT get it dry in our room at Presidente – no fans in the room).
Diving with Jungle Divers, with Stephan (not our regular Stef because he was on vacation) on the Charro boat was great, as always. I still can’t believe we see a new critter every trip. This time we saw a couple of new ones – a purpling flabellina and another nudi that I haven’t yet ID’d.
Restaurants we tried that were new to us: New Especias and Guidos - both Italian and both good. R preferred Guidos and I preferred New Especias! Blue Angel and Rock n Java were great, as always.
I have such a difficult time adding photos on ScubaBoard that I'm going to try to add a link to a google album I created. I hope it works. Here's the link. Crossing my fingers.
