Fab trip to Kantenah

Shared with permission by Natasha

We returned home Saturday ( ) so, I thought I would leave my review of our stay. We stayed for 2 weeks from the 12th Oct. We stayed in the deluxe garden room Kantenha, not fs!

At checkin they tried to sell us the upgrade to fs & after a long 10hr flight it was a bit overwhelming to be honest, we didn’t take the upgrade as we hadn’t budgeted for it and then I was worried we would miss out & our holiday wouldn’t be as special but after a day we realised this wasnt the case. The room was all newly upgraded, spacious, clean, comfy bed & loved the jacuzzi bath! The room was a little damp, we mentioned this to concierge & they sent a dehumidifier to the room which fixed the problem .

We stayed in block 41 which was fab, we was close to the lobby & not far from the buffet & pool. We loved walking past the flamingos everyday. The wildlife was amazing & made our holiday, we loved seeing the iguanas and coatis everyday and saw the monkeys a couple of times!

Buffet was fab, so much choice. We agree that the food could be a little hotter, it was all very tasty but a bit warmer would make all the difference. Loved the live cooking stations and the crepe station!

The a la cartes were some of the best we have experienced in all inclusive (we are basing that on other brands like Riu Palaces & Bahia Principles) our least fave was the Argentinian but we still enjoyed it. We loved the others, we visited the Thai twice, Italian twice, Japanese for a la carte and did the show cooking which we enjoyed. Favourite was Posiedon, gorgeous setting on the beach & the seafood was so good! We found making reservations easy for these, we did a mix of booking through the app and also at concierge. A couple of times we didn’t have a booking and took a chance turning up at restaurants & both times they got us a table .

We tried room service twice as unfortunately we managed to catch flu on the travel over so we wasn’t up to going out a couple of evenings, that was also very good. No complaints! We enjoyed the a la carte at the beach bar for lunch also. We tried the sports bar one day but the service was very slow & it did come out cold but we gave them the benefit of doubt because it was one of the tropical storm days and it was packed, they was rushed off their feet!

As we got unwell we popped in the hotel shop for some medicine, it’s very expensive around $25-$30 for some throat sweets. So, for that reason I would always make sure we travelled with lots of medicine so we was prepared incase we got poorly again but thank you to the kind lady who gave us some flu sachets .

Beach was stunning, we loved how natural it was. Sea was warm & a beautiful blue, if you get in by fs area there’s no rocks, very clear, we enjoyed snorkeling around there & love the windy days, jumping in the waves was lots of fun!

I know it’s not connected to the hotel but we had massages on the beach & they was amazing, so good I went back for a second one! The buggies for transport around the hotel are really cool!
Room cleaning was great, we didn’t get our linen changed for nearly a week but then realised it was our fault, there’s a little card on the bedside table we hadn’t read that says if you want linen changing pop it on the bed, once we did that it got changed. We always left a tip for the maid daily and we left a tip daily with a note in the fridge asking for lots of water for the bar guys which they always stocked up for us.

We found the hotel very clean & there always seemed to be maintance going on.
We had no clue of any renovations going on over at White Sands from Kantenha. Kantenha lobby was lovely, very relaxing. We really enjoyed sitting there during the day & in the evening. We could see from passing Colonial lobby that’s where the entertainment was and much busier but we was quite happy with our more relaxed side so we didn’t actually watch any entertainment this time.

What ever time of day we could always get some beds at the pool but if you want an umbrella you do need to head down a bit earlier but not silly o clock!

The running routes were really cool & the gym was well stocked with everything you need.
Out of the hotels we caught the colectivos everywhere, was so easy. We never waited for than a couple of minutes for one to pass, always felt really safe. We went to Tulum ruins one morning, it was a bit chaotic when we arrived trying to figure out where we got tickets but we asked for help & figured it out. It was really interesting but was so hot & they don’t allow plastic so we had to bin our water so we did struggle with the heat and no water so we didn’t stay too long.

We also took the colectivo to Casa Turtugo Cenotes, we had such a fab time swimming the Cenotes there, highly recommend!!

And our absolute favourite thing we did was snorkeling in Cozumel! We took the colectivo to Playa Del Carmen, then took the ferry across to Cozumel, the ferry port was very crazy, lots of tour guides trying to sell you tours. There’s 3 ferries that go over so we just picked one and got the tickets. We didn’t realise to pay by card you need id, we didn’t have id on us but luckily enough we had enough cash so just a heads up for anyone who didn’t know that.

Once in Cozumel we met Benjamin from TOP TOURS & we took a boat out to 4 snorkeling spots, we had the best day, we saw turtles, tropical fish, star fish & sat in the water having some snacks & a drink with stingray swimming around us! Was really surreal!

We learnt to not look at the weather apps, they was always wrong!!

So, overall we had a fab holiday & would definitely return .
I’m aware my review got very long so I will stop now but any questions please do ask!
Oh and p.s Pina colada with strawberry was sooooo good