The Surfing Turtle

Fine, clean room if a little stare. The blue or red *****es painting on the walls make things starker. Our room (#1) has a very comfortable kingsized bed. Two blocks from the surfing beach & then 2.5 mile walk along secluded beaches to the Luquillo food kiosks). Corner near the motel has some nice things during the day can get gritty at night (beer store nearby). Nearby on-street parking can be hard to find.

This place is a very cozy place to stay. Almost in the middle of town it is situated in a very prime location. Coffee shop across the street The room was very clean and it was very easy to be calm. You will get a very nice night of sleep here. The price for this establishment was very affordable.

We stayed here for 5 nights at the beginning of February. We paid over $250 per night to stay in the Deluxe King Suite and were expecting a quality of stay that matched the price we were paying. Instead, we ended up with an experience that was more akin to staying in a backpacker hostel, and a poor one at that. When I booked the stay there were relatively few reviews of this place on TripAdvisor and most of those were old, but were mostly positive. I also checked out some reviews on *********** and they seemed mostly positive but were again from some time ago. After I had booked and just before we checked in, a couple of very negative reviews appeared on TripAdvisor but we approached our stay with an open mind. Rather than give chapter and verse here are the pros and cons of our stay: Pros: - the deluxe king suite is a nicely configured room with ample space Cons: - the room was clean but not well maintained with chips on the furniture and old coffee stains all the way down the wall by the coffee machine. - On arrival we had been given just two towels between us for a 5 night stay. No hand towels, no mat for the shower which was dangerous given you were stepping out of the shower onto a tiled floor, no teatowel to dry up the glasses or coffee cups. The towels we were given were threadbare and had stains on them. We messaged asking for a shower mat etc and towels with no stains on. We were then given a shower mat and some more towels which were unstained but which had bleach marks on them (they were coloured towels). We never got any tea towels for the glasses and cups so had to let them drip dry. - No washing equipment had been provided to wash the glasses and cups, so all we could do was rinse them under the tap. - A couple of days after we checked in the lock on our door started to fail intermittently. We messaged asking to have it fixed as we were struggling to get in and out of the room. The owner came over and said there wasn’t much he could do as he didn’t have any spares available although there might be one available in the San Juan office. We explained that we weren’t going to be able to stay for the rest of the nights booked as we couldn’t be in a situation where we couldn’t either enter or leave the room when we wanted. We left him to think of a resolution and when we came back to the room the lock had been changed and worked perfectly, which was great. However a couple of days later we heard the people in the next door room struggling with their lock in the same way we had so it seems as if he just passed the problem onto another guest rather than deal with it properly. - The night before we were leaving the sinks and toilets started making a gurgling sound. Early the next morning at about 7am, there was a long period of gurgling and then what looked like and smelt like sewage water backed up into the shower. As we needed to leave to get to our next destination we didn’t have time for someone to come out and either fix it or cle

We got to Luquillo early, Yaya and her daughter set us up w early room, ride w another guest to Fajardo for crazy El Yunque hike and water slide, plunge and rope swing. Very small friendly hotel w maybe 5 rooms plus one hostel room.

Service was great. They were super helpful during check-in (had to clal, there is no desk) a town-wide black-out and late check-out. Room was big and 99% clean (some dust in places, but nothing to keep me from coming back) 5 stars, probably the best option in Luquillo given the location (by town center and the beach), price and condition of the place.

The person on the phone was very nice. The room: Bare or painted concrete. No amenities. No safe. No coffee maker. Not even a bottle of water. No desk. The building has No indoor common area, no reception. And only one other room seemed to be booked on a busy weekend in the town. If you wanted to unpack there's no place for your clothes, but you won't need that because, like me, you'll leave after one night and not plan to return. Stained chair cushions and sheets. This room was Right By The Road — like 3 feet from cars driving by. And so there was an unpleasant quality to that along with the noise. Did I mention that the place has no reception? The managers are off-site and it’s a strange self-service setup. The door lock feel flimsy and that, plus the lack of a safe makes me hesitant to leave my laptop, or anything else of value in the room. The place appears as a hotel online but then charges a substantial cleaning fee the way an AirBnB would.

This is a hostel with several "hotel" rooms that I would advise you to avoid. This place is all marketing from what I can tell. It's one of these abominations that cropped up with the rise of AirBnB that seems focused only on taking money and does not provide value. It is way overpriced and not a good experience. The place *looked* mostly clean overall, but the two plastic chairs had stained and very thin cushions. The bedsheets were stained too, and thin, with mattress stains visible through the bottom sheet. Time will tell if it was bed bugs but I woke up in the middle of the night with what felt like bites from them. And that was after deciding to wear long-sleeve pajamas because of the thin sheets. And that was like 3 am. I couldn't even fall asleep until after midnight because the ground-floor room is literally 3 feet from the town's main road which gets loud traffic until late. And then the club down the street cranks noise until midnight. Wasn't a great start to the night. The room is minimalistic. Bare or painted concrete. No amenities. Coffee mugs are provided, but no coffee maker, so the mugs are just decorative. They don't even offer a bottle of water. No safe so be careful because the door locks are junk. No desk, hence no place to sit and write. No luggage rack. No place for your clothes: no dresser or wardrobe. Don’t even think about a pool or similar. There isn’t even any common inside space to share with other guests. There's no reception and so no way to adjust anything. They take your money online and then are disengaged. The build out is shoddy. Bathroom is cramped with open shower next to toilet and light switches that don’t turn off. The shower only half works: the water pressure is too low for the overhead shower. Also the handle to control the shower is cheap and doesn't work well. The place appears as a hotel online but then charges a substantial cleaning fee the way an AirBnB would. That too is strange. The price appeared reasonable, but then with the cleaning fee it was much higher. To be fair the person on the phone was open and kind and understood my surprise and gave me a chance to decline the booking. So I made the decision to stay here with knowledge of that fee and the thought that I’d stay multiple nights and it would average out. But I would not stay another night here. People I spoke with in town said that the owners changed a few years ago. That they never see people staying multiple nights and that it mostly caters to back-packers staying in the dorm rooms. To pay over $200 to stay in a place that I’d never offer for rent and that by rights should not be permitted is a nasty side-effect of the AirBnB phenomenon. A place like this in the past, if it existed at all, would be better and charge less than half what this place charges. To offer something low quality at a high price, while not illegal, doesn't square with their online reviews, which I now think are likely fake

Great little hotel in the heart of lucillo. Worth trying out. Clean and neat.

The place itself is fine, we had a nice clean room with comfortable bed and good air conditioning and WiFi. Rooftop space is an added bonus as is the outdoor shower to rinse off the beach. It is a short walking distance to La Pared beach. Unfortunately it was VERY noisy even with earplugs and the neighborhood is marginal.