Bambuda Lodge

Dreadful dreadful rooms, dorms for sure, not sure about privates, no air con and you will get destroyed by insects. I had to leave after two awful nights, covered in bites from flies and no sleep. The location is absolutely lovely though, but forget snorkelling, the water is murky. The food is really good, I had divine Alfredo pasta, but its all very expensive and on top of cost of room, food and drinks cost me $200 for 2 nights, one person.

Cool location in the lush jungle with walking paths and warm water! I only lost a little skin on the waterslide, but still so fun! The included hike to hospital point was surprisingly perfect. Nightime underwater glow worms were a trip! I didn’t book this room, but they put me in a sea urchin shaped upsides pool, it was cool. The second night I did get eaten alive by mosquitoes (from under the door and ceiling circle air vent wasn't a perfect closure. Fan was very needed, but still a bit hot one night in Oct, Food was okay, ceviche was the best I’ve had in Panama! All was healthy at least! What an adventure!

During my trip I tried out 3 different Bambuda hostels (in dormitories each time). I waited until I'd done all 3 before writing this review. Here is my personal experience : Out of the 3 Bambuda I think they had the most amazing staff. Everyone was kind, smiling, friendly and very helpful. For some examples, they use WhatsApp to communicate and on the way to the hotel my water cab broke down. I told them just to let them know I'd be arriving later and they offered to call for assistance. Another example, I dropped my AirPods case (i m a mess) and lost one of them. Half the staff helped me look everywhere for it. For backpackers on a budget, you need to know that there's no kitchen and as there's nothing on Solarte Island you'll be totally dependent on the hostel restaurant. There is a filtered water fountain, but I haven't tried it myself. As far as the food is concerned, everything I ate was really very good, they have a wide choice of western and more local dishes, and concerning prices nothing shocked me compared with other restaurants across the islands. Good to know too - for dinner they have a "family dinner" concept which means you have to order your meal before 5.45pm. After this time, you won't be able to order any food whatsoever. So if you're planning to arrive at the hostel after that time, be sure to have dinner beforehand! The place and the location itself are amazing but I was a little unlucky on the room. I was in a 6-bed dorm room with a bathroom, and it wasn't very clean (not bad considering there were already 4 other people in the room) but there was a terrible smell of urine throughout the room (not even in the bathroom itself). Also be aware that it’s kind of a party place so if you are in the dorms it will get noisy (unless you are partying too 😉) As the place is more or less off the grid, there's no hot water or aircon (but you can ask for as many fans as you like!). as you can imagine, since you're on an island where there's nothing, you'll have to pay for water cabs every time you want to go somewhere and then come back, which can get expensive! My advice, choose this hostel if you want to chill and relax in a beautiful place rather than to visit, there’s a time for everything!

We booked a Private Canopy Room. The room itself is pretty dated and it doesn't have a private balcony - if you are in one of the front rooms, the guests in the back rooms walk past your room, via a "side gate" to their rooms. The rooms at the back have private balconies as you can lock this side gate. The organised jungle walk was incredible - got to see loads of red frogs without going to red frog beach - and the swimming at the beach would have been great if we'd had the time. There are lots of volunteers - workaway staff - so if you want to have a party, this is a great place to stay as there are organised drinking activities in the evenings but if not, the private rooms are far enough away to not be affected by the noise. The activities were a bit hot and miss. Stand up paddle boarding advertised on the website but they only had one and it was broken. They did have 2 kayaks but they were both single kayaks so if one had been booked/taken when we wanted to go out, the only way to be active with a partner was to take out the canoe. The water slide is a thing of beauty though - really enjoyable and lots of fun! The pool is also great but there are definitely not enough loungers around if the Lodge is busy/full. We included breakfast as part of our rate which was good. The food overall was great - lots of options and all very tasty. However, there are no other restaurants nearby so you have to eat at Bambuda unless you pay for a water taxi which can get get pretty expensive when doing a round trip. This, along with the room rate, makes a stay at Bambuda Lodge not very budget friendly. The prices for the private rooms are more like that of hotels without the trimmings of a hotel (no hot water etc). Side note: we did have terrible weather (cloudy every day for the 3 days we were there) so this possibly negatively impacted our stay.