L5485NLrichardc
Google
The Hotel Rural El Navío is located outside the town of Alcalá in a banana plantation. The trees stretch in all directions, including down to the Atlantic shore, less than a kilometre away and accessible on foot through the plantation itself. The rooms are pleasant and well equipped, each with a large terrace looking out over the green carpet to the ocean and the island of La Gomera in the distance - when it is visible under its cap of cloud. Bananas are available for guests to help themselves at will and the lounge at reception has a large collection of useful guides and other books about Tenerife. For us the only negative point was the hotel food, which other reviewers have praised. We stayed for 3 nights and had dinner at the hotel each evening, because there are no other restaurants within comfortable walking distance and we did not want to drive out at night, especially as we enjoy a drink with our dinner. Dinner must be ordered before midday on the day itself, and the hotel contacted us before our arrival to ask if we wanted dinner on the first evening. Although we had confirmed that we wanted one of the two starters (it's always only a choice between salad and soup) and the only main course on offer (which is the case each evening, although a vegetarian alternative is available) the waiter (who doubles as receptionist) seemed to think we wanted only the starter salad and offered us dessert afterwards. We succeeded in the end in getting a main course and, to its credit, the hotel waived the charge for this dinner. Although the hotel prides itself on serving authentic local dishes, we actually found the food bland and unimaginative, and worst of all, although the soup was hot, all three main courses that we ate were cold. The same was true of the "hot" dishes at breakfast, which were in a bain-marie but cold. We observed that none of the other guests staying at the same time as us ate dinner at the hotel more than once. We enjoyed our stay at the Navío and the staff at reception were helpful - getting our laundry done and booking a whale-watching cruise from los Gigantes (we saw only dolphins!) - but in the restaurant we had the clear impression that they would have been happier not to have to serve us dinner. Worst of all, one of us found a sharp piece of plastic in her soup at dinner on the second evening, but when we told the staff they just shrugged and quickly changed the subject. So a good hotel all in all, but with some improvement needed in the restaurant.
