Hotel Riu Funana 5*

The Riu Funana in Cape Verde is particularly impressive due to its beautiful, spacious grounds, the dreamlike beach, and the very friendly staff. The food is varied, so everyone finds something, and the entertainment as well as the big theme party on Friday also provide good amusement. Also to be highlighted positively are the daily hygiene checks. Particularly impressive is the commitment to turtle protection right on the beach. A volunteer organization secures and protects the nests there, which you can even adopt – a really great project. Unfortunately, there are also some points of criticism: There are no ashtrays on the beach, which is why many cigarette butts are lying around. Especially with regard to turtle protection, significantly more responsibility should be taken here. The sun loungers are partly old and damaged. There is also room for improvement in terms of hygiene, e.g., in the handling of drinking cups at the beach bar or the behavior of individual employees in the catering area. The rooms are a bit dated, partly with mold in the wet rooms and rusty fixtures. The pool bar also occasionally stands out due to unpleasant odors. In addition, it can be noisy at times in the morning due to cleaning staff. Overall, a nice vacation with small but important opportunities for improvement – especially in the areas of hygiene, maintenance, and environmental protection.

Overall we had a great time at Riu Funana. The hotel itself is decent enough but not 5 star in my opinion. The staff were all brilliant and worked hard to maintain a really good standard of service for their guests. The whole resort is huge yet still kept super clean. Plenty of options for food and drink and we were never left disappointed with any of it. The food was always fresh and hot. The WiFi works great across the whole resort but not at the beach. The beach itself is lovely too. Always loungers readily available at no extra cost, and the water was perfect too. The entertainment team do try to keep everyone entertained day and night and some of the evening shows are excellent. A couple of things we didn’t like were the double bed actually being 2 single beds pushed together and guests at the neighbouring Riu hotels being able to come in and use the facilities at Funana but we couldn’t go to use there’s. That meant our pool area sometimes got really crowded with not enough sun loungers for everyone. Also the seating area between Mandalay restaurant and the theatre would get really hot in the evenings. When I asked staff to turn on the fans that were there, they said they were broken. We were there for 2 weeks and were still always broken. I would absolutely recommend going to visit Santa Maria town as well. See how the locals live. Some of them will try to entice you into their shop to buy stuff by saying they work at your hotel and remember you etc… but it’s all nonsense. Just politely tell them no thanks and they’ll leave you alone. It is very safe in the town as well. Also do some excursions to see others parts of the island, see the lemon sharks, the blue eye, salt mines, turtles laying eggs etc… it’s all worth it. Would we come back to Sal? Yes. Would we stay at Funana again? Maybe.