The grounds at El Decameron are beautiful

My wife and I had a chance to go to El Decameron hotel in El Salvador in 2008. When you get to El Salvador you will probably see several signs promoting this hotel at the airport and other locations. We must say we were pretty excited about going there but were disappointed from the beginning.

El Decameron is about an hour and a half from San Salvador if you travel by car. The grounds as you drive into the hotel are beautiful. The gardens are very well maintained. The first disappointment comes as you try to check in. They send you to this big lobby that looks like a dirty bus terminal. Here you grab a number and have to wait for a while until they call your number (forget the fancy lobby that you would expect from the way they market this hotel).  Once your number is called, you will be assigned your room. If you can, ask for the newer rooms (eastern side of the hotel) because they are nicer and they are away from the noisy part of the hotel.

The rooms are decent. As far as we could tell they all have an ocean view. The middle of the hotel is where the noise is concentrated because of the main pool and restaurants. Each room has air conditioner. In our experience, however, the air conditioner did not work and even though we called several times to complain, the hotel staff did not do anything about it. They wouldn’t even switch us to a different room. This was another bad experience.

El Decameron Hotel Building

The food is not very good if you eat from the buffets (but expected from an all you can eat buffet) and it’s decent if you make reservations for dinner. Every morning you are allowed to make reservations for dinner at several restaurants (asian, steak and there might be another one which I forgot). Do this if you want to have a better meal since they will not allow you in the restaurant unless you have reservations.

Low-tide beach

The beach is definitely not one of the nicest in the country. It is covered with rocks so you might want to wear some booties to avoid cutting your feet on the rocks. Once the tide is low, there won’t be much of a beach. They have a salt water pool that you can use and there are three pools in the facilities. Kayaking is available when the tide is high. The facilities also include tennis courts, pool table, ping-pong, a disco, theater and a small shop. You will find several employees trying to sell you timeshares throughout the facilities.

Our favorite day in this hotel was one day as we were walking towards the eastern side to get a late lunch, we saw a sea turtle come out of the ocean. This is a rare event since they normally come out in the middle of the night. The turtle started digging in a hole to lay its eggs.

High-tide beach

Turtle in the middle of the day

Overall, the grounds are beautiful, the beach looks nice when the tide is up but other than that, we cannot recommend this hotel other than for a day trip.