What follows is an excessively long review of Pedro’s Inn. If you want to get to the details, you can skip The Backstory and go straight for The Review. Or for the cliff notes version, scroll down all the way to the Summary. Updates to the original review are made in Italics.
The Backstory…
Four years ago, my fiancée and I decided to have a small destination wedding. We settled on the country of Belize and in particular, the town of San Pedro on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye. Neither of us had ever been to San Pedro, or even Belize for that matter, and knew little about the country. After a ton of reading and online research, we invited a few friends, packed up and flew off to Belize.
We had a terrific wedding on the beach and the entire trip was simply an unforgettable experience. The locals that we met were so friendly and welcoming. It made such an impression on us that we’ve been back many times since.
This spring as we were returning from our yearly trip, I received notification of discounted airfares to Belize for October. American Airlines was offering a round trip rate of $330, and since we usually pay $600 or so, the deal was just too good to pass up. We immediately purchased the tickets and prepared for a fall trip to our paradise.
Before our first trip, we had researched many lodging options. Ambergris Caye is an island split in two by a small river. The town is south of the river with several small hotels and resorts along with the daily activity associated with town living. The north end of the island is much more quiet and quaint, peppered with remote resorts that are accessible only by water taxi. We decided that being within walking distance of many bars and restaurants and having more to do would make for a better trip. As a result, we booked our stay in town. It turned out to be the perfect decision for our group.
Ever since we have stayed in San Pedro town. In the past, we’ve put up around $150 per night for a stay at The Blue Tang or more usually $250 a night for a nice two bedroom condo at The Palms. Both are outstanding properties and come highly recommended if you are willing to pay that kind of money.
However, this year we decided to make our trips more economical. For our spring visit, I did quite a bit of research and after some recommendations decided to book at The Conch Shell, a small inn on the beachfront in the center of town. I assumed the location would be perfect and thought that I couldn’t enjoy San Pedro without the beachfront setting, so I negotiated a $50 rate (discounted from the regular rate of $67 per night) and booked a room for my 2 week stay.
Needless to say I wasn’t too happy with my accommodations. In short, the rooms felt very insecure and there was a lot of noise from the dive shops early in the morning. Also, the lack of air conditioning left me extremely overheated, the tv reception was unwatchable and the in-room wifi was extremely spotty at best. If you want to read up more on my experience, check out this link: http://jasonsouthwell.com/post/111109861/a-quick-move
On that spring visit I became acquainted with Pedro’s Inn. Pedro’s is a popular bar, hotel and backpackers inn. I ended up spending many evenings enjoying Pedro’s thin-crust pizza and playing poker in the back room with the locals. Pedro himself was there to welcome me to his bar and show me what it means to “ring the bell”.
When we were planning our fall visit, I decided to try Pedro’s Inn as a value accommodation. We’ve loved our stays at more expensive places like The Blue Tang and The Palms, but were not at all happy with our last attempt at a value stay with The Conch Shell.
I’ve traditionally thought of Pedro’s Inn as a fun bar with a back-packer’s style hostel, but apparently over the past year Pedro’s has been reinventing itself. He still has his 14 “hostel style” rooms starting at $10 US per night, but recently Pedro has built a new hotel building across the street from the bar. The new hotel has 32 rooms with air conditioning, cable tv and start at $50 US per night.
For our trip, we had 8 people coming down and we needed 5 rooms. Pedro graciously offered us a discounted rate of $40 per night.
The Review…
Location
Pedro’s is a unique little campus on a dirt road by the airstrip. It’s two blocks west of the main road through town with its back to the runway. To get there from the airport, head south on the main street past Tropic’s new terminal and make a right just after you pass the Island Academy. You should see the sign for Pedro’s Inn.
I will be honest. Initially I had some concerns about staying at Pedro’s. This was going to be our first visit to San Pedro where we would not be staying on the beachfront and the first time we would be without a verandah with which to enjoy the cool sea breeze. Also, on our prior stays, we always made sure to be located within a short stroll to excellent bars, restaurants, and gift shops. I was worried that Pedro’s was a bit far from the center of the town activity and I did not want to be isolated from everything that we enjoyed about San Pedro. There was also a minor concern that Pedro’s proximity to the airstrip would make for a day filled with noisy distractions caused by puddle jumpers landing and taking off all day.
I’m happy to say that my concerns were completely unfounded.
Pedro’s location turned out to be a nice change of pace for us and was surprisingly convenient. I found Pedro’s Hotel to be much closer to the places I like to frequent than The Conch Shell, my other value hotel experience.
Within a five minute walk from Pedro’s you will find some of the best bars in town, A short stroll will bring you to two of our favorites, BCs and Crazy Canucks and other fun stops like the Road Kill Bar and Coconuts beach bar. Also within a five minute walk you can find 3 grocery stores, a gas station and most importantly, the Beer Distributor where you can buy cases of beer at wholesale.
And if you find yourself missing the beach, the best sunbathers beach in town can be found a two minute walk away at The Exotic Caye resort (Crazy Canucks) and the best swimming beach in town can be found three minutes away at Ramon’s. Also within a five minute walk from Pedro’s you will find the following beach hotels and resorts: The Palms, Changes in Latitudes, Belize Yacht Club, Corona Del Mar and others.
On those occasions when you do decide to walk into town, a quick 3 minute walk to the beach and another 4 minute walk in the sand north (right foot in the water) and you find yourself at Estel’s our favorite breakfast place or Central Park, the place to go for a midnight snack.
And about that airplane noise concern? I don’t remember ever hearing an airplane. Pedro’s is close enough to the airstrip that I must have heard a takeoff or landing at some point, but honestly, I just can’t remember hearing it… at least not while at Pedro’s and certainly not while I was in my room. I guess it just wasn’t a problem.
Facilities
Pedro’s is a campus of three buildings, one sporting the bar and hostel, one sporting the office and Pedro’s home and the third being the new hotel across the street.
Just in front of the office building is Walter’s Big Deck and Pedro’s new pool.
The pool is a beautiful fiberglass pool imported from Miami and was extremely well maintained. The water remained the perfect temperature for cooling off on a hot Belizean day and the private deck provides ample room for taking in the rays.
Pedro’s has free wifi and the pool area is the best place to get a strong signal. The connection is perfectly fast enough for browsing and email but was a bit slow for serious work (granted, serious work for me is different than most). Pedro’s internet speed was comparable to Coconut Hotel’s free wifi and significantly faster than Lime Bar’s free wifi. But a visit to my friend Tim and Tina’s house showed just how much faster island internet access can be. Regardless, imagine chilling by the pool with a beer, checking in with your life back home in between dips in the pool to keep cool. That was pretty much every morning of our vacation.
The office is the center of your operations while at Pedro’s. You will find Cindy or Lorie behind the desk ready to answer your questions, help you book an excursion, rent you a bike or just to chat you up for a bit. Also in the office you will find free morning coffee. It’s a delicious blend and when they empty the pot, they will make more. We enjoyed filling up their huge coffee mugs and taking them up to the pool to relax and take in the Belizean air. Maybe it’s the coffee speaking, but mornings at Pedro’s pool are paradise.
Also in the office you will find a refrigerator fully stocked with soda, beer and water for your daytime purchase and consumption at the pool. They also permit you to use the refrigerator to keep small items cool and provide a microwave to heat up something when needed. I wasn’t aware that this was available until later in the visit when it was offered to someone else in our group. I didn’t take advantage of it. I’m guessing it’s something they don’t advertise, but make available on request.
At about five in evening, Pedro’s bar comes to life. The bar has the standard Belizean beer selection as well as other standard alcoholic drinks and sodas. You will find that the bar has a definitive persuasion toward Jagermeister. While you get the sense as you first step into the bar, you should ring the bell to get the full understanding of what I mean.
After you’ve been drinking for a while, you will most certainly get hungry. Pedro’s has a great selection of specialty thin crust pizzas, a common favorite being the garlic shrimp pizza. If you’re not in the mood for pizza, they also have great barbeque chicken wings or chili on the menu. Walter, the cook (and apparently all-around handyman) at Pedros’ does a terrific job. He’s also a very nice guy to chat with if you get the chance.
For those rounders among us, there is an (almost) nightly game of No Limit Hold’em in the back room. Some nights they play 1-2 NL and other nights they play 2-5 NL. The game is filled with local expats from the UK, Canada and US, among other places and everyone has a very good time. If you like to play poker like I do, you will certainly get your fix playing in this game.
The bar is often very busy but the bartenders Cindy, Lorie and Raul all do a terrific job keeping the drinks flowing and the food orders coming. It’s a fun time even if you are not staying at Pedro’s.
Room
My prior attempt at a value stay at The Conch Shell prompted me to expect the worst with value stays in San Pedro. I knew that Pedro had air conditioning. That was the biggest amenity lacking at The Conch Shell and hence I was looking forward to it at Pedro’s, but I wasn’t sure what to expect otherwise.
I will say that upon arrival, everyone in my group was pleasantly surprised. What we found were extremely solid and quiet rooms with amenities not found in the other value rooms in town.
The first thing you notice when entering the room is that the beds are deceptively simple. They are plain wooden frames sporting a single thin mattress. These simple beds however proved to be rock solid and extremely comfortable with the mattress holding a perfect firmness. The king size bed was very large and extremely easy to get in and out of bed without disturbing my wife. My back felt terrific after a week sleeping in the beds, and I slept more solid than I have in years.
The next thing you notice is that the beds are built higher than normal. This ended up being quite a positive as it allowed us to use the space under the bed to store our empty luggage and dirty clothes. Since the rooms at Pedro’s have little storage space, the under-bed space is highly useful.
The TV’s at Pedro’s have a full range of cable TV channels and offer crystal clear reception on all but three or four channels. This is a HUGE upgrade from my experience at The Conch Shell where only 3 channels were even sort of watchable, and that was only if you squinted your eyes just right.
The bathroom is very simple, sporting a toilet, a shower and a few towel hooks (the sink and mirror is in the bedroom across from the bathroom door). The water ran plenty hot and the water pressure was adequate for a nice relaxing shower.
The biggest positive of the room had to be the terrific air conditioning. It makes the room as cold or as warm as you want it and it works very well. The AC at The Palms doesn’t work half as well as the AC at Pedro’s. I love good AC and Pedro’s got good AC.
We did have a few wishes for the rooms at Pedros. There isn’t any space to hang clothes outside of the few hooks in the bathroom. My wife likes to unpack immediately when checking into a hotel room and that was the first thing she noticed. She mentioned it a few times through the week, so it must have bothered her. I just used the door of the bathroom and the curtain rod to hang wet clothes to dry, but a few more hooks or a clothes hanger would be nice.
Also, the beds came outfitted with only sheets, no blankets. This normally wouldn’t be much of an issue but I like to sleep with the AC cranked up and my wife gets cold very easily. We likely could have asked for a blanket or something, but it never crossed our mind during the daytime and we solved it by covering my wife with a dry beach towel.
And finally, I really miss having in-room internet access. The Palms and The Blue Tang Inn both have in room internet access. I do most of my blog writing at nighttime and ended up having to queue it up for publishing the next morning. It did also keep me from doing work on vacation. A minor annoyance for me, but I think my wife liked my situation just fine.
Overall, the rooms at Pedro’s were a pleasant surprise. They were very clean, extremely quiet and unexpectedly comfortable. I would recommend them over the rooms at The Conch Shell any day of the week.
— update — It was asked of me to elaborate on the furnishings of the rooms. The rooms at Pedro’s hotel are very simple. You get beds, TV, shelves, sink and bathroom. There is an overhead light in the bedroom and bathroom and there is a ceiling fan in the bedroom. It would have been nice to have a side table or chair to place remotes or water bottles on, but we found the bed big enough that there was plenty of room between us to keep whatever we needed within reach.
Also, to answer a question, the rooms are accessible from an internal hallway that passes through the center of each floor. Each room has one window that provides plenty of ambient light during the day.
Staff
I’ve already mentioned most of the staff, but I want to mention a few specifically. Most of what makes Pedro’s so special is the attention you get from the people behind the place. Cindy and Lorie are great to talk with and jump at the chance to help you with anything. They can book you on an excursion or simply make any other arrangements in town. We were looking for a nice place to have a big dinner with everyone in our group for our anniversary. Lorie knew that Mango’s was reopening for the season that very night and suggested that she call to get us a reservation for our group. She also was instrumental in helping the rest of our group get the most for their dollar when determining which dives to take.
The most amazing thing was that Pedro himself worked to make our stay perfect before we even arrived. When I had posted my disappointment that the Blue Lotus Indian restaurant (my favorite restaurant) would be closed during our visit to his forums at http://ambergrisvacations.com, he stepped up and offered to fly in the best Indian food from Belize City and have an Indian Night and Pedro’s. We absolutely took him up on his offer and his proactive customer service made an amazing stay simply outstanding. And the Indian food was probably the best I’ve had…
Summary
It is really hard for me to say just how much I enjoyed our stay at Pedro’s in anything less than 3000 words, but I’m going to try.
A stay at Pedro’s is full of unexpected amenities and outstanding customer service.
When compared to other “value” accommodations in San Pedro, Pedro’s Inn is simply, cleaner, more comfortable, safer, extremely quiet, more friendly and has more to offer… at a cheaper price.
From the free pool-side morning coffee, to the free wifi, to the evening food and fun in the bar, to the comfortable beds in air conditioned rooms, you find yourself extremely content and ready for a perfect vacation in the Belizean paradise that is San Pedro.
If you are looking to save a few bucks on your next vacation to Ambergris Caye, I highly recommend giving Pedro’s a try. If you don’t drink, are nitpicky about perfection in your room, like to cook most of your meals in your room, are a grumpy person in general or have no sense of humor, you may wish pony up some extra money and stay at The Palms or go get pampered at Victoria House. For the rest of us, Pedro’s is a great hotel and I’m sure that you will be pleasantly surprised with your stay. I know we were.
