Review of Almond Beach Resort at Jaguar Reef 3*

My family very much enjoyed our stay at and recommend Almond Beach Resort, Hopkins, Belize. Almond Beach is part of the Viva Belize group which in Hopkins and includes Jaguar Reef Lodge & Spa, Almond Beach, and Villa Margarita. We were there four nights: June 20-24, 2015. I used to go to the upper-mid level resorts in Mexico (20+ years ago) and locals' to upper level resorts in Costa Rica up to 10 years ago (but not CR's Ritz-Carlton). What I remember about those places is poor construction quality. Even recently build places had crumbling (looking? ) cement and poor attention-to-detail finishes. Not AB, JRL, nor WM. Everything I saw in WM was well made with quality materials, good workmanship, and attention to detail. I would not have made all the same materials choices, but I was shocked by the place given what I have come to expect. We booked via Almond Beach via Expedia but ended up in Villa Margarita room 101. ABR and JRL are adjacent properties which merged. VM, separated from ABR by a large beach house, is now part of the resort too. They all share a restaurant, check-in, and general hotel services. Our “ground” floor room had direct, unobstructed frontal views of the ocean (none of this peak or view of the ocean, this was full ocean front) with sliding glass doors opening onto a covered patio with high-quality patio furniture. The 15-20ft of patio ends and a really nice pool begins. On the patio side of the pool, steps go to about three feet of water for about five feet. Then the pool's depth plunges to about 12ft for about 10ft when it jumps back up to a depth of about 5ft and slopes up for 10-15ft to the stairs closest the beach. There is a slightly elevated hot tub to the side of the pool and about eight high quality lounge chairs along the sides (two partially in the pool water, but not the mattress part). It is a really nice set up and situation. VM has three floors and my guess five or six units. We had the pool to ourselves almost all the time and only about half the time were two of the lounge chairs were being used by other guests. Our room was large with high quality furniture. Lots of hard wood furniture that is undoubtedly not environmentally politically correct, but at least locally sourced. The room also had a refrigerator, (potable) water cooler, and hair dryer (I don't remember if it had an iron and ironing board). The beach is public, but, to say the least, not crowded. On the beach, the resort had free hammocks and lounges, many of them protected from the sun by permanent thatched roofed umbrella-like structures. There were always plenty open to choose from – very different than all the other beach resorts I can remember. Of the four days we were there, it rained one. We had a wonderful and relaxing time. The good: Not crowded, great facilities, very big room. Ocean water is warm and easy to get into. The bad: For three of the days, the ocean pushed in dark green kelp and some man-made flotsam onto the beach. There is a small army of workers that rake and clean the stuff (at least one day, twice on at least one of the days we were there), but it is highly visible as it covers the last five feet of beach and the first five plus feet of water. The water is warm, but wading through kelp at the beginning is less than fully inviting. Our room could have used 4-10 hooks in the large shower stall on the side opposing the shower head to hook wet bathing suits up to drip dry. The ugly: Everything at the resort is priced in U. S. Dollars BEFORE the 12.5% Belize sales tax and the restaurant and some other things have a 10% resort surcharge that does not go to the employees. Every other place we went, including two upscale restaurants, menu prices were in Belize dollars AFTER the tax. From what I could tell, the prices at the resort were competitive or slightly higher than similar quality services nearby, except for the resort prices did not include the 12.5% tax. They have to make money, but this just seemed annoying and tacky.