Ladera Resort

The hotel could not possibly have a more beautiful setting! The staff was attentive and friendly. It was a perfectly romantic, relaxing vacation. The hotel actually does look as beautiful in person as it does on their website! We started planning our return trip before we even left!

We came for the romantic open air experience and the view, and got what we bargained for. The resort is beautiful; a little rustic, and cozy. We stayed at Jade Mountain a few years back, so this wasn't our first 3 wall hotel room and we knew it wouldn't be a problem for us. Having your own pool a few steps from your bed with no neighbors or gawkers going by is fantastic. If you don't feel like wearing a swimsuit, then don't. It's a great way to start a day on vacation. The whole place is pretty casual, so you don't need to lug a giant suitcase, just the basics. You will either love the three wall concept or hate it, but you should be able to figure out which camp you will be in long before you leave home. Yes, you will have geckos in your room, and a few bugs here and there. And, you may have a bird or two visit you for breakfast. And there may be leaves on the floor blown in by the rain the night before. If these things will freak you out, then this probably isn't the place for you. If you don't mind these things, and don't mind hearing the frogs, the trees, and the rain, and feeling the breeze at night, then you will love it. It is a different experience than having 4 walls and AC all night. It makes it tough to sleep late, morning comes and boom- there is the Caribbean sun, but there is no real nightlife to be had, so partying until 4 am isn't really a thing here. We stayed in a Hilltop Dream Suite and enjoyed it quite a bit. I think the heated pool makes a difference. Maybe not essential, but nice to have. The staff are both friendly and helpful and being at Ladera feels like being a castaway on a desert island (albeit one with good food and a spa). The food is not spectacular, but is quite good. If you want to shut the world out and just be with your significant other, you can do it very well here. There is little nightlife or shopping anywhere around. For that reason, the meal plan is probably the way to go in my opinion. Grabbing a taxi for a 30 minute ride through the mountains each way just to get dinner someplace else is not worth it to me. Granted, I am not a foodie, so your mileage may vary. For us, this is just a place to chill out and enjoy the quiet, the sun, and an island breeze. We will definitely be back.

My husband and I stayed here for our honeymoon in June. View was awesome. I heard that you can see the beautiful sunset between two Pitons if you choose the timing of your stay properly! Food was expensive but nice. Staff was all warm and friendly. However, I will never stay in this hotel again. First, we knew that the room doesn't have any window, but we didn't expect that the nights can be this much windy! Relentless strong gusts came in and out of our room with lots of my palm-size moths. Anything light in the room cannot stay without putting something on them. In terms of wind, wind noise, and bugs, you get better off if you stay in a tent, technically speaking! ...No wonder why Ladera provides ear plugs to the guests. Second, speaking of noise, our stay hit the "tree frog" season! These frogs are cute and sweet guys, but they are LOUD. As soon as you have even one in your room, you will suffer from their extremely sharp and electric sounds. On the second night, we successfully spotted one tree frog (it's difficult to find where they are due to their size), but it was difficult to take him away since he was behind something, and even more difficult to kill him since he was so cute. By the way, rooms are not too far from a road, so you hear car noises also. Third, we found that the lighting of the room was poorly done. Apart from the bathroom, the lights of the room were almost like search lights: strong white light come down. No wisely set indirect lighting, no honeymoon mode. These strong and bright lights also attracted too many bugs. Fourth, other aspects of the room interior design were terrible. For example, the way the door knob of the bathroom was so stupid that I once really badly smashed my thumb into the door right before zip lining! Also, you can actually see half of our bed from the restaurant. Our plunge pool had no warm water, so it was like a "mental training" when we plunged into that pool. Fifth, their sewage system is poor that toilet doesn???t properly flush. I screamed when I saw my husband???s ???stuff??? flowing back into the toilet bowl from the bottom. Hotel people explained that it happens often??? Five points listed above are already more than enough to destroy honeymoon atmosphere (my husband struggled so much to even simply sleep!). And above all, what we had a hard time to understand was that Ladera has no space for its guests on the Sugar Beach (the nearest white sand beach). Ladera provides a free shuttle access to the beach (only 3 times a day though). But once you reach there, you can have a free stay only either in the very narrow, crowded and crummy public area (next to a smelly dumping point) or under the shade of a big tree which is right outside of the restaurant fence (tables and chairs are just next to it). If you want to have nice white deckchairs which occupy easily 2/3 of the beach, you need to pay extra USD50 per person. ???Ladera isn???t cheap. Not at all. Yet, the quality of room stay is far from peacefulness. And they don???t even provide a decent resting place on the beach!? Our stay in Ladera became indeed an ???interesting??? experience, but we see absolutely no value for money. Never go back their again.