Hotel Rural Los Jarales

Very nice hotel with a beautiful view and spa (pool, sauna) in 700m from Istan.
Very relaxing place to rest.
The only disadvantage they don't serve dinners, only breakfasts. So if you are hungry - you should go to the village (10 mins of pedestrian walk).

I had the pleasure of staying here on a solo motorcycle trip. I felt welcomed. The level of hospitality is top notch. Best breakfast I had in Spain, everything local.Wonderful views, excellent value.

The location is stunning. The hotel has an atmosphere and charm of a cozy mountain lodging. The staff was very nice and helpful. We would stay here again.

This "Hotel" (more like an pension with hotel > 3 star budget), is well located in the beautiful southern Spain mountain nature facing dam lake nearby and the Mediterranean sea in the horizon. This place has all the panoramic locations for a more quiet stay for enjoyment of the country side close to the beach coast line.
Typically rustic, it represented the best of Spanish traditions with comfortable country-style rooms with views of the outside from more than one window. It is well equipped with AC that works fine, very small TV and hair dryer.
Staffing, only the poor Angel (only seen one staff person in the overal accomodation), to deal with everything!! Really nice guy, very flexible and supportive regaining check-in and informations for access the accomodation.
Very easy to park since hotel has their own privet parking area with places for more than 10 cars.
All surrounded by a beautiful garden with nice smelly plant flowers with refreshing shadowing from trees.

Not everything was indeed perfect though. Starting with bathrooms, not enough toilet amenities, only two pairs of small shower gel and shampoo package bags. Showers were only protected with a soft shower curtain easy to flood the entire bathroom floor.
Resting in the rooms were nice and comfortable enough for a peaceful rest. Overall internet access was quite good for such a country side place.

The painfull issue was with the poor breakfast options. Everything was rationed! Four an advertised accommodation in booking.com as a superb free breakfast, this was really disappointing and misleading.
Basically, the single staff person needed to deal with all guests at once around 9:00h preparing a basic breakfast meal, consisted in: one coffe drink, a cup of juice (no guest option, for us, peach juice... who would guess if even we preferred other flavour?!), a small table with pair of bread slices, cheese and ham slices, two smal pots of butter/jelly and tuna pâté and two small Magdalene cacles, all for only two persons!
Regarding fruit options for our delightful beautiful in the country side, any, no options, no single supermarket apple, orange or peach!
What a such nice superb free breakfast!
For that all the evaluation of the accommodation must be downgraded, because for the price (deducting thing poor minimalistic breakfast very cheap), this accommodation for the price, understaffed and undermaintained, was simply too expensive!!

Regarding the inclusion of extra enjoyable perks such as spa area and swimming pool, for the jacuzzi room we found out that a pre reservation was needed (very convenient to have it for advertising and sell of the place, very inconvenient and unpleasant for their hosts enjoyment... can't understand why have it to blocking use it... so frustrating and annoying).
For swimming pool usage, with a very good schedule from 9:00h to 21:00h (in summer), we found it to be with a lack of daily maintenance, with lots of floating leaves and greenish algae at the bottom of the pool.

For a > 9.1, booking.com rating accommodation, we found it to be very overrated!
With a truly superb breakfast, better quality (service, perks, bathroom etc)/price ratio, could have been a solid 4 star review (hardly 5), but, unfortunately, not the case here... :/
Nevertheless a very nice place to be and enjoy some vacations in the countryside of southern Spain with panoramic views towards the Mediterranean sea!

It is a nice hotel out in the nature (surrounded by the beauty of the Sierra Nieves) near town Istán. The hotel is reasonable and provides all necessary things for a fine stay in Southern Spain.

The only thing I found disturbing was the fact the four night I slept there, in no single day the towels were changed. From a hygienic point of view, it is very important to meet this (basic) standard. I can understand if it happened one day. But all the four night is not done and does not contributes to a fine stay nor experience. Unfortunately, not a good experience.