El Gran Mestizo Resort

Great place, locally owned, EXCELLENT customer service. Eduani & Noely went out of their way to make us feel at home. Communication was top notch. Restaurant was very good. They arranged tours and ground transportation for us. The grounds are lovely. We saw lots of birds and wildlife right at the hotel. Lamanai tour with Vladimir and local bird watching & local history tour with Herminio were fun and informative. Highly recommend!

We stayed at El Gran Mestizo from Feb 14th - 16th, primarily as a base for our rivertour to the Mayan ruins of Lamanai (booked through the resort). The resort is on the river so the boat picks you up right there. Perfect. The tour itself with Gilberto as captain/guide was very nice, beautiful and interesting. If you're lucky on the way (back) you might encounter some wildlife along the riverbanks, such as crocs, iguanas, monkeys, birds etc. The nature itself is already worth the trip. Lamanai was also very interesting and Gilberto knows everything there is to know and gladly shares it with you. He will also arrange a scrumptious lunch. El Gran Mestizo itself is a non expensive very nice resort, with good rooms, quietly located along the river away from Orange Walk, with a nice pool and relax area. And there is also a very very good restaurant called Maracas with delicious food at very reasonable (compared to other places in Belize cheap) prices. The rates at El Gran Mestizo include breakfast but not at Maracas. For breakfast you have to go to their sister hotel De La Fuente on Mainstreet in Orange Walk, a 5-10 minute drive. If you don't have a vehicle EGM provides a shuttle service. The breakfast is more than fine in a clean dining area but not comparable to Maracas. I would have liked breakfast there but this was fine and the food was good.

Our stay at the El Gran Mestizo was fantastic. My family loved the pool. The staff continually went above and beyond with all of our requests and needs. It was a great place to relax and so quiet and peaceful. The riverside cabins and restaurant were both outstanding. The food portions were generous and the quality was so good. The cabin was spacious and gave us ample room to spread out and have our own areas. We loved being next to the river and its beautiful scenery.

We had a wonderful stay at the Gran Mestizo resort. We were most impressed by the beautiful riverside setting, watching the numerous birds, iguanas, and the occasional crocodile swim by. All of the staff were really friendly and helpful and made us feel right at home. Our room was nice, a unit within a 2-storey quadraplex. It was bright and airy and very clean. The TV had a great range of programming and the Wifi signal was good and strong. We loved having a fridge in the room to keep our water and drinks cold. On the down side, there was little bit of lack of privacy with people walking right in front of our window and able to look right in. While the onsite restaurant (Maracas) was very tasty and highly recommended, the service we received was awful. Our waitress was not all that friendly, uncommunicative, and did some very strange things. For example, she took my wife’s order and then just quickly walked off without saying a word. We assumed she was going to check something? But she never came back. Eventually she did come back – with my wife’s meal! Then she finally took my order, so I watched my wife eat her entire meal before mine came out. Equally annoying was the breakfast service. They don’t serve breakfast at the Gran Mestizo – you actually have to go across town to their sister hotel. There, you sit inside a claustrophobic, crowded little cafeteria while you have to wait more than 1 hour for a simple breakfast. And they offer nothing to drink other than coffee/tea. Not worth it! Why don’t they just serve breakfast at the Gran Mestizo in the beautiful outdoor riverside café setting?? The other thing we didn’t like was that they didn’t provide any drinking water (except for a small token 350ml bottle for 2 people – what a joke). It’s the only place we stayed in Belize that didn’t provide filtered/drinking water for guests. Bring your own water! Anyway, other than the water problem and the dire problems with both the restaurant’s service, and in particular the ridiculous breakfast setup, the Gran Mestizo is a great place and we would definitely recommend it to travelers in Orange Walk.

The resort was gorgeous, quiet and friendly. Wifi worked for us, take a container for water with you.. Definitely will return. I hung out at the pool mostly, room furniture wasn't the most comfortable

Wir haben uns im Januar ca. 3 Tage dort aufgehalten in der Cabin C16. Zimmer/Cabin: Ist sehr sauber und schön eingerichtet. Sehr gemütliche Betten und angenehme Kopfkissen. In der kleinen Cabin befindet sich alles was man sich wünscht. WiFi(sehr gut) TV(mit Netflix), Kühlschrank sogar ein Föhn. Das Bad ist auch sehr sauber und die Dusche hat einen guten Wasserdruck. Anlage/Hotel: Liegt etwas außerhalb von der Stadt Orange Walk. Zu Fuß ca. 20 Minuten. Dies Hotel el Gran Mestizo gehört zusammen mit dem Hotel de la Fuente (in Orange Walk) Mit dem Auto ca. 4 Minuten. Es liegt malerisch direkt am Fluss. Einen sehr schönen und gepflegten Pool gibt es auch von dort kann man sehr schön die frei laufenden Iguanas oder andere Tiere beobachten. Ein großer Pluspunkt ist, dass man kostenlos ein Kajak ausleihen kann, um auf einge Faust den Fluss zu erkunden. Service: Angefangen mit dem Besitzer Orlando. Der Kontakt über Airbnb mit ihm war einfach und unkompliziert. Vor Ort haben wir ihn dann persönlich kennengelernt. Er war super nett,lustig und offenherzig. Außerdem hört er sich auch gerne Verbesserungsvorschläge oder Anregungen von Urlaubern. Abi der Manager vom Hotel war einfach nur super ! Wir haben ihn von Sekunde 1 direkt ins Herz geschlossen. Er hat uns direkt angeboten, dass wir ihm jederzeit schreiben können, wenn wir Hilfe benötigen. Herzlichen Dank nochmal. Und auch das Personal im Restaurant Maracas war überragend. Vor allem Mr. Valdez. Essen: Wir hatten Frühstück gebucht. Hierbei muss beachtet werden, dass dies nicht im Hotel selber stattfindet, sondern in dem Tochterhotel (De la Fuente) in der Stadt. Hierzu wird man jeden Morgen mit einem Shuttle abgeholt und zum Essen gefahren. Das Frühstück war gut. Ansonsten haben wir meist nur im Restaurant Maracas gegessen. Dort war das Essen sehr lecker und qualitativ und geschmacklich sehr gut. Fazit: Das beste Hotel in Orange walk, wenn Sie etwas Ruhe und die Natur genießen möchten. Der beste Ausgangspunkt für die berühmten Lamanai Touren(sehr zu empfehlen) Vor allem ganz viele Grüße an alle Angestellten des Hotels und des Restaurants. Ihr seid super, wir haben uns sehr wohl gefühlt. Danke für Alles