Costa Del Sol, Spain

Spain in a Pain!

After arriving in Alicante, we picked up our Smart car and drove south toward Malaga and the Costa Del Sol where we had secured a free timeshare for 5 nights thanks to Bryan’s parents trade. Unfortunately it was pretty much disastrous upon arrival. We had known that the Costa Del Sol was a big resort area, which we generally don’t like, but we imagined it to be a lot like Cabo San Lucas: a nice pretty beach lined with resort hotels and restaurants. Well it was nothing like Cabo, and the only way we can describe it is like a time share hell. There was building after building, crammed together with no open space and there was nothing that looked nice or pretty about it, even the sea which we heard was cold anyway.

Time Share Hell

First of all the beaches and streets were jam packed with some of the ugliest people on the planet. Enormous, sunburnt, tattooed fatties were waddling around half naked everywhere you looked…it was disgusting. Secondly, the streets were horrid for driving, congested with traffic, roundabouts clogged with trolls. Just getting to the “hotel” was a nightmare! When we finally got to our destination: The Royal Oasis Club at Benal Beach, and we attempted to drive up to the entry to check in and drop off our luggage. But there was a gate and a guard blocking the entrance telling us that check-in was not in the building but across the street. We thought that was a little strange, but it wasn’t tell after checking in and parking on the street (yes no parking at the “resort”) that we realised that this was not even a hotel or resort but an apartment building! A very, very ghetto and nasty, gross, disgusting apartment building with graffiti and barbed-wire. So this resort company had bought some of the units inside and renovated them, but the outside and hallways were a total dump! We were livid! We may not have done very much research, but how could we have expected that? The more we walked around the more horrible the place was.

We can’t understand why people come here in droves. It was like all the riff-raff of Europe were holding a convention.We will never ever return even with in hundreds of miles of the place — we hated it that much! We felt trapped and like the second half of our wonderful trip was being ruined. We had planned on this hotel being a base to explore Andalusia by car, but had no idea the street congestion would have made it so difficult to get away from the coast. So we decided to go and stay in Seville for a few days.