Hotel Riu Funana

“Lovely, pleasant staff, great food, comfortable rooms, the only issue was not enough sunbed availability.”

Lovely hotel, great staff, beautiful roo.s,, food great, only issue was never enouh sunbed availability, so went to beach most days.

“Broad review”

We have just returned from 11 nights at the RIU CABO VERDE hotel, Sal and thought I would try and leave an honest and objective review of the place before signing off from the group. Date of visit - 30/06/24 - 11/07/24 Transfer time was around 30 minutes by bus with 3 drop offs on the way. Hot... more

We have just returned from 11 nights at the RIU CABO VERDE hotel, Sal and thought I would try and leave an honest and objective review of the place before signing off from the group. Date of visit - 30/06/24 - 11/07/24 Transfer time was around 30 minutes by bus with 3 drop offs on the way. Hotel Exterior - impressive, clean and tidy. A member of staff was straight on hand to take your cases from you. Check-in - quick and efficient. We were given room 2149 which is mid-way between pool / sea and main amenities. Cases were delivered to the room within 10 minutes of us arriving. Room - generous size, very clean and tidy. There is a hairdryer provided that appeared to work ok. Usual stuff in the shower. Our fridge was fully stocked as were the optics and everything was restocked every two days. App - a good time to bring up the app. We like extra pillows and ordered them on the app at 11pm, they were there the next morning. I have seen a lot people saying the app is effectively ignored. All I can say is we used it once and received what we requested. Room cleaning - the girls did a fantastic job everyday with usual added touches like animal shapes made from bedding. Food - lots of choice and everything we tried was well cooked. They do seem to try and cater for all nationalities - Yorkshire puddings were available most nights (not quite like mama made but a good effort) along with freshly carved joints - beef, lamb etc. We tried a good variety of most things and didn’t suffer any side effects (admittedly we avoided salad and sushi). We managed to eat at the Kulinarium twice as we enjoyed it so much and would recommend it. No complaints about the Italian either but found this a little more like the main restaurant with just too much choice. We didn’t try the steakhouse so I won’t speculate as to what is like. During the day it doubles up as the pool snack bar and that had a good offering. Drinks - the beer - Strela is acceptable, it wouldn’t win any awards but I’ve had worse. Spirits were a disappointment, not a great deal of taste in them and certainly didn’t appear very strong. White wine was flabby and red wine thin but thought that the rose was decent. Tried some of the cocktails and they were ok, our favourite was the rum punch slush from the top pool bar. Staff - all of these guys are genuinely friendly and can’t do enough for you. Make an effort with them and they will look after you. They all work so hard, from the ground keepers to the waiting on staff, they work a lot of hours for not much reward, please be kind to them they deserve it and if you have a few sheckles left at the end of your trip leave them a tip. I understand that they earn around e150 a month. One down side for me was the conditions these kids have to work in at the pool bar. Because of some bizarre system they have with glass washing they have to work surrounded by wasps - it can’t be safe for them. Sort your act on this RIU. NB wasps didn’t seem to be an issue for customers and I didn’t hear of anybody being stung. Animation Team - this group are absolutely tireless and talented. Always a smile on their face and a quick word. By the pool watch out for ‘aqua mat’ it’s like a game from It’s a knockout (one for the oldies there) and really fun to watch. They work long into the night putting on shows of surprising quality which leads me into - Neon Night - wow, just wow. The effort that went into this event was amazing, don’t miss it! Sorry, we weren’t there for White Night so cannot comment. Insect bites - we saw a lot of people who had suffered a lot of bites but we were always careful and applied spray and wore bangles and had only three bites between us. NB. be really careful at the airport on the way home. There is a little pool surrounded by seats and in the shade which makes it a very desirable to while away the hours, we sat here and my wife was bitten loads - don’t neglect your anti mozzie stuff there! Sun - lots of overcast days and even a tiny amount of rain but that sun still gets you. Don’t be complacent if it’s cloudy, I lost a day due to sunstroke after spending too long uncovered at the swim-up bar on a cloudy day - my fault entirely. Beach - we aren’t beach lovers so only went there once. First of all you have to run the gauntlet of guys selling trips. If you aren’t interested just be firm and they will leave you alone, if you are then they are cheaper than TUI but more about that later. The beach bar is rudimentary but functional without the full choice at the pool bar. Beach is lovely but obey the flags - even the locals warn you about that. Pool / sunbeds - you may have read about the sunbed reserving issues and to a degree it’s true. We used to go up around 9 am and by then around 75% of beds have been taken. We never once failed to find beds with cover but they need to either sort out the reserving issue or provide more beds. On the subject of beds, this was probably the only cleanliness issue. The plastic frames were dirty - mainly sand which could have been removed with a good hosing down and the cushions grubby from overuse, cover them with a towel and they were fine. Finally quite a few of the shades were broken and had to be man handled in to place - fine if you are 6ft 4 like myself but a struggle if not. Santa Maria - major tip here, if you get a taxi into town ask to be dropped at the pier or Sal Beach Bar (any bar will do) otherwise they drop you slap gang in the middle of the lucky lucky men and it’s a hassle you don’t need. The town itself is run down but felt safe enough especially along the beach area. Hotel Odjo has nice beach front bar area. Taxi is e5 or e6 after dark (they have to put the lights on). Trips - we wanted to do some of trips but some footballing event seriously curtailed our available time so we only went to see the turtles which we booked via Elvis on the beach at a much cheaper price than TUI. I won’t spoil the experience for you but all I will say is that we did see turtles laying and the trip was well worth the money. Last thing I will do is give hotel my rating and that would 8.5 / 10. Marked down on the quality of drinks (but I am an alcohol salesman and maybe a bit of drinks snob), the sunbed issue and for the conditions they have to work in at the pool bar. Overall a very good hotel for a relaxing time. This review is meant to be positive so I apologise if I have given any bad vibes.

less