I holidayed for two weeks at the Hotel Golden Paradise for $1536.00 Canadian including health and cancellation insurance and single room supplement.

The hotel was excellent. Unlike some of the others in this area, the Golden Paradise this is located directly on the beach. There are three bars, pool bar, dining room bar and a beach bar offering a fine selection of cocktails free and gratis from 11am to 11pm. There was a late night club named Woody’s about 500yds from the hotel for those who needed more booze. ($1.00 each) I liked the early closing as the hotel was quiet after midnight so you could listen to the crickets and the surf and not the clinking of glasses. The hotel has two small pools but who needs them as the ocean is on the doorstep.

As this hotel only has 90 rooms the place is never overcrowded - with plenty of lounge chairs and bar stools both on the beach and by the pools. This hotel does not cater for young children nor are there any animators trying to get you to sing karaoke or play silly games.

The restaurant offers a fine selection (buffet style) at all three meals per day. There was a wonderful chef on hand at breakfast to fry up your eggs any style but the speciality was their own omelette with tomato, onion, cheese and ham which was delicious. Fresh fruit and that wonderful Venezuelan coffee made the morning complete.

Lunch and dinner - excellent again, with a selection of beef, chicken, fish, pasta, potatoes ( mashed and fried) rice, salads ( try the tomatoes as they are tastier than anything we get in Canada. Must be the sun!) Big beefy hamburgers were also prepared on the grill at lunch for the North American tourists.

I had a beautiful room with a king size bed and very attentive maid service. The place was spotless. My friends also had good rooms although not all are the same. Although each room is the same size in area some are divided into small living rooms and/or kitchens. I had the best of the trio.

The company at the hotel was excellent. I made many new friends from Holland, Germany, France and Ontario who still keep in touch by e-mail.

To sum up, this is an adult hotel. Quiet, non-intrusive, well run and designed for a stress free relaxing holiday.

This hotel is Excellent Value For the Money. Remember the cost $1536.00CDN and most of that was insurance and taxes. I’ll be back!!

Andy

Golden Paradise Hotel
We recently spent a week at this hotel, and, although Margarita Island, itself, was geographically, quite beautiful, ranging from lush mountains, to mangrove wetlands, to desert areas (i strongly recommend the 1 day Jeep island tour), the hotel left much to be desired.
GO Travel Direct (Canada) rated the hotel with 3 stars, my opinion is, barely 2 stars. The rooms were not too bad, although no chairs (we dragged in 2 plastic chairs from our balcony, which overlooked an adjacent wasteland), the TV only received about 5 Spanish only channels, no bath mats supplied (the shower enclosure leaked) and 2 single beds, but it was clean.
GO Travel stated in its brochure Daily Activities and Nightly Entertainment, well there was none at all, unless you counted the one bar that stayed open into the evening, with CD music on a "boom-box".
The absolute worst thing was the food. The best thing i can say about the food was that although it was, at best, mediocre, i never got ill eating it. It was bland, without hardly any variety, frequently the same each evening, and, many days, the same thing for dinner and for lunch.
In the morning you had to squeeze your own orange juice (why a few carafe's were not pre-prepared by the staff, i don't know) and as there was only one juice squeezer, and it takes quite some time to squeeze 2 cups of juice, the line ups to get juice could get interminal.
One safety issue, also, about the rooms. They would only issue one room key, and were adamant about that. Unfortunately the key was needed not only to enter the room, but was needed to exit the room too, the door handle was superfluous. If you did not put the key immediately in the inside lock, then you had to search for it to exit the room, a serious safety issue if a fire broke out, at, say, 2am in the morning, when you're half asleep, in panic, trying to get out without finding the key.
The famous Playa El Agua beach, also, was fine to sunbathe and walk on, but many days the waves were quite rough, and, it was not untill we arrived that GO Travel advised it was not safe to swim on the beach due to severe undertow. There was a flag system, if you could see the, not too prominent flags, which were not displayed on the (un-manned) life guard huts.
My recommendation - do not book the Golden Paradise Hotel, you will probably be very disappointed, we were.
A footnote - there were no NON smoking areas designated in the hotel restaurant, ergo if you're a non-smoker be prepared to inhale the surrounding smoke, even worse at breakfast when nearby smokers light up that first cigarette of the day and proceed to hack up the morning phlegm.

went to Margarita , Venezuela in January 2006 for 1 week. This was our first and last trip to Venezuela.
We'll start with the 3 star hotel Golden Paradise. The food was terrible, not much of a selection.
There was supposed to be nightly entertainment at the hotel-nothing at all but the bar, which closed at 11pm.
There are 2 very small pools-one of them so small that our pool in our backyard is bigger!!
However, the rooms were very nice, spacious and were cleaned daily but you need to ask for towels as they only give you 2- no facecloths neither.
Also the bathroom windows have no blinds on them.
Margarita is a beautiful island without a doubt, but their sanitation needs to be improved greatly as people have garbage piled up along their houses/ stores.
Dogs running loose, at the hotel begging for food, and also at the beach.
The beach itself- El Aqua is very nice, very strong undercurrent so be careful not to go too far out at all. You can also get some good deals with the beach peddlers- bargain with them.
Caution-- do not walk along the beach at night- friends of ours got mugged, taking money, jewellery, and credit cards.
As for excursions- we did the snorkeling tour, which was a total waste of money. The winds were too strong, very cold water, no fish at all. We were supposed to visit a shipwreck- alright it's a boat that caught on fire years ago. The smell was awful- bird droppings galore!
The one tour I would reccommend would be the jeep tour, lots of fun , great tour guides, lunch and drinks included and other beaches to visit.It's a great way to see the island.
In general, I was very disappointed with our trip, if you're on a budget, I suggest you go to Cuba or Mexico. If you need further info - feel free to e-mail me at kbac12003@yahoo.ca
Kimberly
Montreal, Quebec