Lot's of Potential, But Fell Short In Many Areas
The resort is very quaint and beautiful from an architecture perspective. The white-washed Mediterranean-style villas have exquisite views of the ocean and surrounding mountains that make you feel like you are in a beautiful village in the Greek Isles. Our 1-bedroom villa was quite spacious – around 1200 sq. feet. There’s a wide sliding lattice door in the living room that opens out onto the large tiled balcony. When we first arrived, we found bath robes and flower petals neatly spread out on our bed. The beach in front of the resort is very clean and many non-motorized water activities were available at no-charge, including sailing, snorkeling, paddle boats, and sea kayaking.
The resort is around 20 years old and sadly, it appears that maintenance of the facilities in many areas has been neglected. A lot of small annoyances reduced the enjoyment of our vacation. The night we arrived, we found a light fixture hanging loosely out of bedroom wall, the microwave oven was broken and had to be completely replaced, the bath tub drain mechanism didn’t work (they tried fixing it twice and then just gave us a rubber stopper), the air conditioning in the bedroom was not working properly (BTW, the only room with AC is the bedroom and is the only cool respite away from the warm sticky air), and the bath tub drain was plugged. During our check-in process, we requested a room upgrade. After multiple follow-up calls and promises by the resort staff to look into it, no one ever responded to us. After 3 days, we gave up. Towards the end of our vacation, the aged air conditioner woke us up in the middle of the night and kept us up, as it sounded like a diesel truck pulling a heavy load of logs up a hill.
The standard bed pillows were very firm and thick pillows. We woke up the first morning of our vacation with stiff and sore necks. After multiple requests over a 2 day period, we finally received softer pillows. In our kitchen, we noticed a lot of ants crawling on all the counters (the resort provides a can of insecticide in every villa – we just didn’t want to use it around food). They even were also present in the bathroom sink and counter. Of course, the presence of bugs is somewhat understandable, because the villas are largely open to the outdoors, which does add a very cool feeling to the whole place. We just had to keep all of our food in the fridge. The bigger challenge were the birds that freely entered our villa through the large open window in the kitchen (there’s no screen or covering of any sort for the window – it’s basically just a big hole in the wall). The birds were small and kind of pretty – little black birds with orange or red chests and a few yellow finches. However, they were quite aggressive in constantly trying to get our food. We had to constantly chase them away, because they would sit on top of our drink glasses or pick at our food if we were more than 2-3 feet away. They also left some nasty little droppings inside on the furniture and floor every day.
The villas are all built onto the side of a mountain. The hills are very steep and you have to take a shuttle van every time you want to go between villas or between your villa and the lobby, restaurants and beach. It wasn’t a big deal for us (it was actually kind of fun), because there shuttle service was usually very quick. However, I think this factor would make this resort difficult for blind, elderly, and the disabled people. It’s definitely not wheel chair accessible and getting out of the van on the steep slopes takes a bit of effort. We noticed a few people struggling with it on occasion. Also, there are a lot of stairs that take you between some of the villas and the restaurants and pools. Handle rails were missing from some of the stairways (such as the stairs that leading from our villa to Papa Don's Restaurant and the pools). This might make it harder and less safe for people who need to hold onto something when going down the stairs.