Playa Turquesa Review

We stayed at Playa Turquesa Ocean Club in June 2022 for a week and we have two types of reviews. A review of the grounds, and as AirBnB guests in apartment P201. There seem to be a lot of AirBnB rentals at this place.

PROS:

Close proximity and walking distance to a couple of mini marts, and a lot of nice restaurants (such as Citrus). They are all within a 4 minute walk away.

Close proximity to the beach.

Attractive and "maintained" grounds.

2 swimming pool areas.

Good sized 2 bdrm, 2 bathroom units.

Ceiling fans in each room

The nearby beach restaurant -TOC

CONS:

The security guards at Playa Turquesa Ocean Club don’t speak English, don’t smile at you, and most importantly are not helpful:

A few examples:

1. One day we were being harassed in the pool by some young boys who wouldn’t stop trying to swim under us, and their perverted father found it funny. Security didn’t understand that we were being harassed as women, and didn’t help us. So we left that pool area even though we had been there first.

2. There is a autolock feature on the sliding glass balcony door. This was not pointed out to us. There is a small sign about it that we didn’t read on the door. On the third night, we accidentally slid the door closed (to keep the AC in) and locked ourselves out without a mobile phone. Someone went and got security - who came and saw us. We asked for ladder (to climb down from the second floor so we could walk around and use the combination to get in the apartment). The male security guard left and never came back! After 30min we had no recourse but to CLIMB DOWN a PALM TREE because no one else was around. Seriously, there is no assistance buzzer and no one around who you could trust to give the door code to. Making it DANGEROUS to a newcomer to Playa Turquesa Ocean Club who is not accustomed to such a set up. There is no way to disable or control the autolock feature on the balcony door.
Why have such useless security guards who can’t assist you?

More CONS:

3. The toilet water pressure is not good. We were told after our AirBnB booking that no toilet paper was to be thrown in the toilet. So you have to dispose of your toilet paper wastes in the trash daily if you don’t want your bathroom smelling malodorous.

4. AC may not be included in your AirBnB booking or may be capped at 50kwh daily. Ask about it before you book. Use your electricity (including the dryer) wisely or it could run you about $25 extra/day. We ran in to overages with the unit we stayed in having no AC in the master bedroom, and using the AC in one bedroom overnight. Ceiling fans ran when we were in the unit during the day and our host still wanted extra money for electricity used. This may be a trap to drain extra money from your wallet.

5. Without any regard to the paying guests, the landscapers use an electric lawnmower to cut grass and blow the grass and stuff all over instead of collecting it in a bag. Then bits of grass and dirt get in the pool. This makes the lovely looking pool look like a dirty mess on some days and unusable. Another guy with a blower will show up and continue to blow stuff everywhere. And make your breathing experience awful if you are asthmatic or have environmental allergies and want to relax on the loungers.

6. We don’t know who is responsible for cleaning the overgrowth of sorghum/seaweed in the water of the beach area, but piles of it are collected and left to stink on the beach - right were tourists sunbathe.

7. The beach vendors selling everything from sour coconuts to home made anklets that break within 5 minutes of wear are constantly molesting sunbathers. You’ll have to tell them “ no gracias” more than once to get them going. It’s about the same harassment as Carmen Del Playa in Mexico.

The front door locking unit used a code that malfunctioned on us. We were told it needed a battery change. It left our ArbnB apartment unlocked for a few hours (not a good situation) until it was changed. So make sure the locking mechanism sounds responsive and not like it's on its last legs.