Review: Hotel Nikau — Sac-Be.com

To do justice to this review, I think it is best that I give a little background as to how we ended up at this hotel. We had just spent 2 stressful nights in a hotel room that locked with a padlock on the outside, offered no maid service, had no bathroom faucet - just a pipe coming out of the wall. The bathroom door locked on the outside, causing me to lock myself in once. The TP was never restocked there was no bottled drinking water! All for more than $125 a night USD.

When we found out that we were going to be stuck in El Cuyo for an unknown amount of time, I knew we could not possibly stay where we were, past the one last night we were booked. That is when I walked into the courtyard at Nikau and immediately took a deep breath and exhaled, feeling peace for the first time in days. I opened the door to the reception area and was warmly greeted by Tamara, the owner. I asked if they had any rooms available and she explained they had just opened and yes there was availability. How long would we be staying? That we didn’t know, so I explained our situation: that we lost the key fob to our car and it was parked in town and we didn’t know how long it would take to get the replacement. We explained the ordeal and that we would stay at our current hotel this last night with our 4 friends, but would like to move in the next morning if possible. I also explained that the day after that was my birthday and this was not how I had planned it. She promised that things were about to change, I was so relieved that I had tears.

As we gave our information to Tamara, we explained we lived in Puerto Aventuras and she told us she had gone to high school there. We laughed and chatted about people we both knew. Immediately we felt right at home. The next morning, while we were walking Manito on the beach, we ran into Tamara, Carlos and their dog. She told us she was ready for us whenever we wanted to come. We were so excited that before our friends left, we made them come check out the hotel we were moving into. They we all disappointed that we had not found this place first!

When we finally were ready to move our stuff in, we were greeted with cool wash cloths, and found 2 glasses and a bottle of wine for my birthday. The room was immaculate. The color scheme was cool and soothing. The artistic touches were classic and beautiful. Our walk-in shower had a huge window and garden plants with a rain shower. The bathroom not only had a gorgeous stone sink, the sink came with a faucet. The room was on the first floor, one of their pet-friendly rooms, and came with an expresso machine, small fridge, drinking water, sitting area with a couch and coffee table.

All the wooden furniture is one of a kind and hand crafted by her father. You can see his artistic touches all over the property, that along with Tamaras exquisite interior decorating makes this an amazing property. For those of you who know Puerto Aventuras, you may also know the name Peter Terrain, a local artist. Two of his pieces are in Nikau, one in the dining area and another in the master suite.

The master suite is the entire third floor of the second building. It has a view of the ocean, and two balconies – one with a huge wooden bathtub! It is spacious and incredibly beautiful. The hotel has only 8 rooms. Breakfast is included. In the middle of the courtyard is a lovely pool with a gorgeous deck made from hardwood beams. It was one of our favorite places for relaxing and reading. With lots of palm trees you can always find a bit of shade.

Behind the hotel is where both Tamara and Carlos and her parents have their homes. I think this is a plus because it means there is always someone on the premises. One night out of nowhere the winds went wild and we had a ferocious, hail storm. Tamara and Carlos came to check that we were alright. We were fine, and thought the storm was incredible, but how nice of them to check. In all our years in and around the Yucatan, we had never experienced hail or a storm quite like that.

Another plus is that Nikau has solar power. El Cuyo still has dirt/sand roads and is quite remote and it is not uncommon for the electricity to go out, but with the solar we always had enough power to run the water, lights and fans. The walls of the rooms are so thick that you often didn’t need to run the air because it held the coolness.

We loved Nikau so much, and enjoyed Tamara, Carlos and her parents. After staying 2 weeks we promised to come back in the summer, and I booked the entire hotel for my upcoming 70th birthday. We have found our new home away from home. El Cuyo is only 2.5 hours away. It has the most pristine beach, reminding us of days gone by. Time slows down here, life is peaceful. Everything is walkable, but if you don’t want to walk, you can easily get a tuk-tuk to take you where you want to go. The people are warm and welcoming, and there are some amazing restaurants – you’ll be hearing a lot more about El Cuyo.