The maids are the brains behind this hotel. The tent cabins are immaculate and stylishly turned out with towel art and high quality sheets, despite the challenges of the blowing sand and lack of electricity. My young daughter and I loved this place - the most spectacular beach and so much for the nature-lover to do. We only spent one night, but wished we'd stayed longer instead of moving to the pretentious Tulum hotel strip. I highly recommend the hotel, but the restaurant is really bad. Expensive for what it is - incredibly bland food and spirtless service. I saw one guest wait 35 minutes for coffee. In Mexico it should be impossible to ruin Guacamole, yet this kitchen manages that challenge easily. Our waiter never returned my change, and I ended up leaving it for him thinking it was a tip but in fact service was included in the bill. The restaurant has a spectacular view yet one just sits there feeling disappointed, a complete downer.

Stay at the hotel if you like tranquility and access to the Cesiak tours and activities, but eat at the nearby palapa hotels on the Tulum beach road just a few miles away. The Cesiak tour was really interesting and well worth it. Ask for "Mela" as your guide - she is great.

Unlike others, I found the front desk staff really nice and helpful.

My wife and I spent two nights at Cesiak. We found the tent/cabins comfortable, and the rest rooms and showers were very clean. Yes the wind was blowing like crazy, but you can control the noise by opening or closing the various flaps on the tent.

The beach is beautiful and is the way the entire coast was maybe 25 years ago. A great place for a long walk and time to relax.

I will say, though, that the entire coast around Tulum is expensive. We paid $90 for our deluxe (sic) tent, a lot more than you would think it is worth. A standard continental breakfast cost $8 each, again, way more than one usually thinks of in Mexico. We found food and lodging prices in the area very high compared to what we are used to elsewhere in Mexico. The tourist business is alive and well.

One thought more. We took the sunset tour run by the ecological center.l It cost $77 each including tax and was a huge disappointment. We learned very little about the ecology of the area, spent most of our time in open water of the lagoon, sat for 45 or so minutes at a "bird" island watching the same six or seven species arriving and leaving. I'd enjoy the beach, but skip the tour. Maybe at $25 it would have been OK, but not at the price they are charging.

On the surface this seems like a really nice place. The staff are friendly, the location is very pretty and and facilities seem to be ok. I have two main problems with this place however.

The first may seem picky but to me it is important. After dark on the first (and only night) we stayed there was an incident where we found a man standing on our balcony after dark, we don't know how long he had been there and only saw him by chance as we left the cabin. He had no uniform and no reason to be there. When asked, he said he was there to sweep the floors, a total lie considering it was after dark and windy as hell and he had no broom or anything to sweep with. He promptly left and we took all our belongings and put them in the boot of our hire car because there is no security at all in the cabins, just a zip doorway. We reported it to the front desk but they didn't seem concerned at all. There is no security in this place. There is very little lighting and our cabin was far away from the reception building. If anything had happened we would have been isolated and alone. I had to accompany my girlfriend to the toilet block all night because the incident had really freaked her out.

The second problem was far more serious in my view. When it finally came to go to bed we discovered that the beds, the pillows and the sheets were all damp and wet. The moisture and sea spray had obviously been blowing in through the netting in the sides of the canvas tent and made all of the bedding wet. It was horrible. Despite it being a warm night I was lying in my bed shivering, curled up into a ball trying to sleep in a wet bed. Reception had closed and despite using the one and only extra sheet they provided in the cabin, myself and my girlfriend were both shivering and going out of our minds unable to sleep. By 4am we had had enough and retreated to the car to attempt to get some rest. We had been travelling and were very tired, desperately in need of sleep and we couldn't. I had already paid for 4 nights up front by credit card. By the time morning came we were approached by two staff members who asked why we were sleeping in the car. We told them the bedding was wet, they apologised but said there was nothing they could do. I told them I had paid for 4 nights and there was no way we would be staying another night if we couldn't sleep. They said there was nothing they could do. We left that morning.

I have since emailed the centre a number of times and received not a single reply from them. They have an auto response that claims all emails will be replied to within 24 hours. It has now been over a week since my emails. They have their money and that's all they care about. Not good enough.

If you really want to explore this area there are plenty of other places nearby that are clean and dry or if you like to rough it a bit then you would be better off camping in a tent by the beach at a car park about 2-3 kms before the Cesiak centre, it would be much drier and probably more secure!! You can use the restaurant and toilets during the day without having to stay there, that is what I would recommend.

CESiAK is definitely an interesting experience -- see some of the other reviews for information about the lodgings. It is a tent, they do have spectacular views, and the bathrooms are shared but clean. For what you get, the place should cost about half what it does. The front desk staff are not particularly friendly, and the restaurant is very expensive but the food is very good. On the positive side, you can drive easily to other establishments on the beach road to Tulum to grab a drink or a bite, and it is an eco hotel. I went to the beach our morning there (we stayed one night) and was the only one around. Very peaceful, secluded. Not sure I'd stay there again but it was fun to do for one night, as a "unique" experience. It was very windy our night there, and since the beach sand **blows** like crazy you can't really keep the tent open to see the sea if you don't your bed to feel like the beach.

We did the evening tour. I'm not sure it was worth the $66/person, but it was fun to see the migratory birds.