Hotel Tioga

Hotel Tioga Review

This grande dame of Puntarenas hotels is showing a bit of age, but it still evokes a bygone era when Puntarenas was the destination on the Central Pacific coast. Face-lifts over the years have helped modernize the place a bit, and it still has the advantage of sitting across the street from a tree-filled park and the prettiest part of the city's Blue Flag beach. Glimpses of the past hang in hallways of the first to third floors with black-and-white photographs of Puntarenas in the early 1900s. Your best bets are the 11 "executive" guest rooms upstairs, with balconies overlooking the gulf, pleasantly decorated with colorful, tropical prints and heavy varnished dark-wood furniture. Rooms around the courtyard, which holds a small pool, can be noisy. The second-floor restaurant is open to cool breezes off the gulf.