Hosteria Cauquenes de Nimez

This is not a luxury hotel. The rooms are small. But the hotel gives this very quaint vibe. Great colors, rustic, mismatched furniture. It's not right in the downtown area so it's quiet. We left our window open and we were disturbed only by birds...nice breakfast with usually buffet fare. It took us 15 minutes to walk into town for shopping. Really great things that were closer were the El Cucuaron restaurant and the Laguna bird sanctuary. Both were surprising gems.

Very nice hotel near the lake. Friendly, helpful staff. Breakfast and laundry service. Wi-fi. Within walking distance of downtown. Coordinated taxi service and shuttles for us. Some currency exchange. Wildlife preserve and good restaurant nearby.

The quaint and rustic decor lodge, 5 mins from the Reserva Laguna Nimez and 16 mins to the main downtown street where all the tourist shops and restaurants are situated. Room is clean, queen sized mattress could be a little bit firmer. Bathroom rather claustrophobic, if had been a bigger guy would be knocking here and there. Noisy Rooms, thin walls and creaky floorboard. We were fortunate for a ground floor room overlooking the garden. This is an adjacent building next to the main reception building. WiFi is next to none, certainly require another router as it is barely detectable. Brekkie is a very simple continental type. The chairs as about to give up, creaky as one shifts weight!

Fantastic lodge in perfect location. You are a 3 minute walk from Lago Argentina, set in mountains with horses milling about, near the amazing Lagunez de Nimez bird reserve. Even though you are away from downtown the fantastic El Cucharon and the pretty good La Cantina are both within a 5 minute walk overlooking the lake. Staff is both friendly and helpful, definitely download whatsapp for local communication, can help with activity, restaurant reservations and taxis. Rooms are large, comfortable and clean. Bird sounds making sleeping soothing. Only downside is that the free breakfast probably should be better. I did not try the restaurant as a result.

At check-in, I was hopeful that the stay at Cauquenes de Nimez this last night in Patagonia would be a nice way to finish the trip after staying at three other nice hotels during our Patagonia road trip. The notion of an experience at a small inn that would be more intimate that our stay at the very nice but corporate-feeling Posada de Los Alamos was appealing, even though the reason we didn’t repeat our stay at Posada de Los Alamos was that they didn’t have a room with a large bed on this night, and Cauquenes de Nimez did. At least that’s what was reserved. Once we were shown to our room, we were disappointed to see it didn’t have the large bed we thought we had reserved, but instead two narrow single beds with a gap in the middle. We tried to push them together to make a large bed, but after falling through the gap on the ground, we resigned ourselves to sleeping separately. Being that it’s a small inn, we gave them the benefit of the doubt that there may have been some confusion that the “Double Room” was supposed to mean a large bed, or that they simply didn’t have that room available. The room itself was nice enough, albeit very small, and the bathroom was very small with very limited space around the toilet. As for breakfast, the selection was very limited, which is certainly understandable for a small inn. But usually small hotels make up for a limited selection with higher quality, and sadly the breakfast offerings here were of average quality. They did provide eggs cooked to order, and we got some decent fried eggs on request, but we had to pay extra for eggs, which is something very unusual in my experience. Sneakily making customers pay extra for things which are usually included at no charge to pad their bottom line is what large corporations call “unbundling”, and not the experience I want at a small inn. The staff was friendly to be sure, but the ultimate consideration for any stay is value for money spent, and this small inn just didn’t provide an experience that justified the cost. It turns out that Hotel Posada los Alamos would have been a much better choice as it was less expensive, the room was better, the breakfast was far better, and eggs were free. And we ran into plenty of very friendly locals, so there really isn’t a need to sacrifice quality of lodging.

Very good and cosy hosteria in El Calafate. The personnel is very friendly and helpful. We stayed a few times in this hosteria during our trip in Argentina and each time returning to this place, it felt like coming home. Delicious breakfast, near the lake with promenade and at a small walk from the city center, restaurant with only a few but very good main courses. Highly recommended. A big thank you to the friendly staff!