CasKaffeSu is the top rated hotel on Tripadvisor for Mindo Ecuador.  But to be completely honest, I have no idea why.

It costs $15 per person to stay here (includes breakfast).  The outside appearance is quite lovely.

However, the problem is that it’s loud.

So loud in fact, that we could hear all the conversations of our neighbors.

The hotel is also set in the middle of town.  Not a bad thing, but the town is small, and given that there are lots of hotel options, being in the center of town isn’t really necessary.

There were roosters crowing all night, construction banging during the day, and the cooks banging the dishes in the kitchen in the early morning.

The owners are really really nice.  They are by far the best part of the hotel.

I wouldn’t stay there again.  Especially, not with there being more hotels than people in Mindo.

It’s probably my own fault, because I went to this small mountain town expecting some peace and quiet.  And, unfortunately, I didn’t find it.

Jonathan’s thoughts on CasKaffeSu:
We’ve been in Quito for 8 weeks now, and have heard how Mindo is this lovely little quaint quiet town in the mountains of Ecuador.

It was with that expectation that we showed up in Mindo, and checked in to CasKaffeSu, because Carrie had read so many positive reviews of it on TripAdvisor.

About CasKaffeSu: The owners really are great, and we enjoyed our conversations with them.

It seems like they really are working hard and have built a nice business there.

My problem was the noise at CasKaffeSu.

Before going to sleep, we listened to our British neighbors on one side talking about problems with keys and locks, as well as some history lesson on Ecuador. On the other side, our neighbors from somewhere in the midwest (I’m guessing Wisconsin) were having a discussion about television programs and travel stories.

Everyone was talking in normal voices… but we were listening to the conversations loud and clear until 11:00PM.

At 2:30 AM, the roosters somewhere nearby started crowing, and they continued every 10 minutes until 7:00AM when we found ourselves listening to other guests and noises from the kitchen (e.g. microwave buttons).

We closed the windows to our room once in the middle of the night and once in the morning, but it didn’t help much, and actually just resulted in the room getting very hot.

At 9:30AM, construction began on a new part of the hotel. I suppose I wouldn’t have had a problem with that if I had actually slept much before then, but I didn’t.

Breakfast was juice, 2 eggs cooked to order, coffee (best coffee we’ve had in Ecuador), and a roll with margarine and jelly. The jelly and the coffee were delicious.

My recommendation would be for CasKaffeSu to put a fan in every room… it would create air flow and hopefully get rid of the heat problem.

It would also create an ambient constant sound to drown out the other intermittent sounds.

Reading the other reviews on TripAdvisor about CasKaffeSu, it may just have been our expectations before getting there to Mindo.

For $30/night, Caskaffesu was good enough, but it’s not somewhere I would recommend for a good night’s sleep, especially when there are so many other options (many even cheaper than $30/night for 2) in Mindo.