Santuario Diegueño

So, as the current reigning guacamole queen of San Diego… well, of the San Diego Travel Show anyway, I finally got to take advantage of my prize of a trip to Tecate to stay a night at the Santuario Diegueno with meals included. YEA! To celebrate, we added an extra night!
First, the trip down was EASY and just about 90 minutes! We crossed the border at Otay Mesa and took the 2D all the way to Tecate. Tecate is a small town, but it was bustling when we arrived and construction was taking place, so on a Friday afternoon, traffic was a little crazy. Also, we kind of did a little tour of the town (we were searching for a taco place that wasn’t open air, since it was like 110 degrees out) and finally decided we’d just head to the hotel and get some grub there. I headed the direction I thought it was and when we finally pulled to the side to put it into the GPS, we found we were literally a block away. So, I don’t suck THAT bad… should have kept going on instinct!
Happily, we arrived at the hotel and headed towards the restaurant. Alas, the bistro had no tacos. It was all pasta and steak. We didn’t care. The food was pretty decent and much cheaper than I’d expected. Gotta love when your beers are only $ 2 each!
We checked in next. We had to review my gift certificate because I wanted to make sure I knew what I needed to do for our dinner and breakfast that was included, etc. I was advised to charge to the room and they would comp it… just like Vegas!
So, the hotel is not such a great place if you are access challenged. STAIRS everywhere, but there are only two stories, so you can stay on the first floor with not too much effort. Our room was on the 2^nd floor. Our first room was not cleaned yet, so they took us to a second room. It was nice! The bathroom was huge with a tub and shower, plus two sinks. The room had a mini fridge with a few $ 3 sodas in it, it also had a wine chiller (first time I’d seen that!), and a coffee maker and some wine glasses rounded out the «dry bar» area. There was a desk, an easy chair and the bed was super comfortable with lots of pillows. Nice sized flatty on the wall and we had a balcony with two chairs out there. I really liked our room. They do not, however, have an ice maker. You can order a bucket of ice from the restaurant, or if you’re like us, pick up a bag at the Calimax or OXXO when you’re buying beer.
The pool is nice, not huge, but has nice elements. We felt it was a little on the murky side. There are lounge chairs in the sun and in the shade and a couple of tables with chairs also in the shade. Also, a Jacuzzi! It was tiny, but it existed, which makes me happy! We did end up using the pool on our second day as we had planned to spend that day poolside. Unfortunately, they failed to mention they had a wedding scheduled that day and everyone had to be out of the pool area by 4pm. We made the best of it and headed to an early dinner after our pool time, which was fine.
Part of my package was a four course meal with wine at their restaurant Asao. I will review that on Asao’s listing, but I will say, the food is fabulous and the service impeccable! Four courses was way too much food, but it was awesome and we ‘paid’ approx $ 100 for a meal that would have been at least twice that in the US! The next morning we breakfasted in the Bistro and that was also yummy, I ordered a small fruit bowl, which was a good size and french toast and the husband ordered machaca and eggs and every dish came with fruit on top of my fruit bowl, so it was quite the fruity breakfast. LOVED. I totally recommend the breakfast there.
Our package also included a tour of the local history museum and a brewery, which I incorrectly had assumed was the Tecate brewery. It was actually a nano-​brewery named Encino Brewery. I will be reviewing that in another review also! So, we had a nice guide, Maria Luisa, who took us to our tours and stopped at the Tecate brewery so we could grab a free beer between the two. She was AWESOME.
We also met some nice people at the pool who live in Tijuana and we all had dinner together at Amores (also another review coming).
Check out was simple. They did, in fact, charge me for my meals, but the man checking me out was happy to remove the charges and had it corrected quickly. All of the staff were very friendly. Few spoke much English, but it’s Mexico and I don’t necessarily expect everyone to be fluent in my language.
Leaving at 8AM Sunday, it took 1 hour to cross the border.
Overall, the property was beautiful, the room comfortable (and cool… YEA Air Conditioning!), the service was great and we had an awesome two night stay. Since I added on one night and paid for my tips to the staff, my weekend trip was super affordable. One night in our room is normally $ 153 US. I appreciate this wonderful prize and thank both Santuario Diegueno and the Discover Baja California Tourist Board for this experience. We plan to return to Tecate and Santuario Diegueno.

Stayed for a wedding for 3 nights and overall had a nice stay. The room itself is beautiful and I loved the balcony we had that looked into the middle terrace.
But I did have some problems which were addressed with the staff and management, but they really didn’t do anything to help us and there was a lack of caring which is why I’m rating it as I am.
1. There is no ice maker readily available. This may seem silly, but we went to the front desk to ask for ice with our ice bucket and were told it would be brought to our room. 45 minutes later, nada. I called down stairs and when I mentioned it, she said okay and hung up the phone. We asked one last time and after almost 1.5 hours and nothing we gave up. I know it seems silly, but this was terribly irritating to me.
2. MORE IMPORTANTLY — I know this will matter to everyone reading… the WIFI (or lack of). Oh, the hotel does offer wifi, but it never worked for us. Can you imagine going 3 days without wifi… when you’re traveling abroad and are trying to connect with the caretaker of your child. Mama-​bear RAWR! The only time we were able to get on was when the folks in the room below us were in their room (it’s the kinda place where the lights and such only work when the card is in the door). Several times it was addressed with staff and nothing. Even when we were checking out, the manager came up to us and asked how things were… I told him about the wifi and he didn’t seem surprised. Even when the young lady was running our credit card, she couldn’t get the wifi to connect to the AmEx machine… after like 8 tries, she had to go to the Asao restaurant to run the transaction.