"We stayed in this house for a week at the end of May / Beginning of June. We had 11 people and it seemed big enough that no one felt crowded. The large space, swimming pool, and unique environment made this one of the best vacations of my life.
That said, the rest of this review is more details about the house that I would have liked to have known when planning my vacation.
Sleeping accommodations: There are 5 bedrooms in this complex, but not all bedrooms are created equal. They include:
A) The master bedroom. This bedroom is the top floor of the building with the kitchen and living areas. It’s big, has a nice bed, nice bathroom, shower, etc. It has a big normal bed, and also a couch that turns into a bed. One thing that’s strange is that there is no door for this room. You come up the stairs and you are looking right at the bed. So if Mom and Dad want privacy, this might not be the room to stay in, consider the jungle room.
B) Jungle room. The jungle room is a nice self contained sleeping area. Unlike the Master, the jungle room does had doors and curtains for privacy. The Jungle room has a bathroom with shower, and tub. It also includes a couch that can turn into a bed. (along with the normal bed.)
C) 3 other bedrooms. The remaining 3 bedrooms are just bedrooms, no attached bathrooms. They had beds, dressers and TVs. There are 2 bathrooms just outside the doors of these bedrooms, so bathroom access is not a problem.
In the main living area (with the kitchen, etc.) There is one couch that also turns into a bed, to sleep one or two more people. These people would have to either go up to the master bathroom or to the bathrooms for the other 3 bedrooms.
Docks and Water: This house has 2 docks. The first is a long one on the more open water side of the house. It used to have a boat lift, but that is no longer functional, and the opening has been replaced with a webbing that I guess is for laying on. This doc has a covered area so you can fish and be out of the sun. It also had a faucet which is handy for rinsing gear, washing up messes from fish, etc. On the side of this doc is a floating doc, that’s good for launching kayaks and paddle boards.
The back doc is basically in a private bay surrounded by Mangroves. It’s quiet and gives the illusion that you have your own private lake. This private bay connects with other water that has limited exposure to the open water, so even on a windy day, this water remains calm enough to fish, paddle board, or kayak.
Since the photos were taken for the rental, a second floating dock has been added to this dock, so you can fish from water level or dock a boat. I rented a pontoon boat and had it docked there for the week.
Fishing; I came to this house for the fishing and was not disappointed. On the open water dock, we caught Snapper, Shark, Jack Corvelle (yes a junk fish but we ate it anyway), and lots of cat fish. We had several big things hooked that we didn’t manage to land. In the back area, with the mangroves, lady fish were jumping constantly. I hooked 3 snook, one huge, but only managed to land one. We also caught a barracuda, lady fish, and more catfish. We caught as many fish off the docs as we did off the boat.
Other Extras: Some other things about the house…… There are TVs everywhere, in the kitchen, each bedroom, each living room, even on the dock. If you are renting a huge house with 2 docks to watch TV, this is your place. We didn’t make much use of the TVs.
There are Kayaks, and paddle boards to use. As we were leaving it appeared they had just received a new deliver of 5 ot 6 kayaks.
There were bikes to use, which allowed people to take a short ride to the local beach.
There is a utility room down by the pool that has an upright freezer. This was handy for storing fishing bait and making ice chunks for coolers.
Air conditioning. The air conditioning on this house is very powerful. Each area has it’s own unit. This is not one of those systems where you need to plan ahead and start cooling in the morning if you want the room to be cool in the afternoon. These units will take the temperature of the rooms down in 10’s of minutes.
I have a few complaints about the house, but they are pretty minor…..
Locks – Because the pool area is only surrounded by screen, it’s considered less secure. This means they put heavy duty locks on the bedrooms, bath rooms, and main building. In the middle of the night if you have to use a bathroom, you need to unlocked the bathroom to use it. While this isn’t too bad for adults it can be a challenge for little kids. It is possible to leave the locks in an unlocked state, but brushing your hand against the keypad quickly locks it, so things were locked most of the time.
Bugs – Amazingly the mosquitoes were not bad, even outside. However it seemed that right in the pool area everyone got bit by ‘no-see-ems’. I think they are in the sand between the tiles. I suggest a spraying or a good washing with strong bleach might cure that problem. I came back with lots of bites.
The ice maker / water on the fridge didn’t work. This was kind of inconvenient since ice is used in just about every drink, soda, etc. Having to buy ice was kind of a hassle. The rental company was very responsive about a problem we had with the locks, but they couldn’t do anything about the ice maker. I’d have gladly given up 3 TVs for ice!
There are other things around the house that need some TLC. One curtain in the Jungle room is missing and we had to hang a blanket for privacy.
There is a house wide music system, with racks of equipment, but no instructions on how to use it. These days everyone has their own music on their phone so that wasn’t a big deal.
Only 2 of the bikes were usable and we had to wait a few days to get a combination to unlock them.
Other than these minor complaints, we had a really good time in the house.
Reviewed By: SJH
