It's our next-to-last day at Maroma Resort & Spa — we fly back to SFO late tomorrow afternoon — and it's been a wonderful place to spend four days. Set alongside a wide, beautiful stretch of beach, Maroma is an intimate 80 room Caribbean resort. Originally a gracious Spanish-style hacienda estate, Orient-Express has maintained the Mexican feeling of the place in developing the property.
What to do at Maroma? Snorkeling, for one thing! Just off shore is the second largest coral reef in the world (the largest is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia). Each guest receives a complimentary snorkeling expedition. We went for ours on Wednesday morning - there were only the two of us on this particular outing. Maroma's boat took us out to the best section of the reef where we saw hundreds of colorful tropical fish and our guide pointed out sea life we would otherwise have missed: a giant starfish, Moray eels, and a sting ray. We spent 45 minutes in the warm water before heading back to shore.
Maroma Resort has a variety of room types. We stayed in an Ocean View room whose large balcony overlooks the beach and sea, but I would especially recommend the Junior Suite category (of which there are four); the photograph above was taken from the suite's terrace. A lot is included in the room rate at Maroma — including daily breakfast, roundtrip airport transfers, complimentary wireless internet — and Virtuoso guests also receive room upgrades if available upon check-in and other special amenities. Contact your Virtuoso travel consultant for more information.
Maroma (search here on Google)
copyright (c) 2009 by David J. Ourisman. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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