The Pacific views were great and it was nice to be close to Kona, but away from the hustle and bustle. Our group had 2 grandparents (age 72) who stayed downstairs and then 4 more adults and 5 kids between 3-13. The house fit us all and after 2 days, 2 of the adults left and we were able to spread out more. The kitchen was well stocked. The storage room was very well stocked, with quality snorkel gear, beach chairs, towels and umbrellas.
We had a pretty good experience overall, but some maintenance issues made it less enjoyable, namely a broken dishwasher, broken gate and no AC unit in the downstairs apartment (we knew there wasn’t any AC upstairs and we were fine with that). The broken gate was both very hard to open and close (you don’t want vacation to feel like football camp) , inconvenient when juggling 2 rental cars and left the property unsecured. While we never had a specific problem with any of the local transients, it wasn’t a great feeling. I did bring this to the owner’s attention, he was initially helpful and told me how to perform maintenance tasks on it, then heard nothing for a day and a half, then after more questions from me he finally got someone out there our last day to simply disconnect the chain.
Property owner did inform me of the broken dishwasher in advance and he had put a brand new coffee maker in the unit prior to our stay, which was appreciated.
Magic Sands beach did not look as pictured during our stay…not the owner’s fault, but don’t expect what you see, it was crowded due to an adjacent hotel, there are rocks on both sides of a very narrow swimming area and rocky beach. Turtle Cove directly in front of the property couldn’t be explored during our stay, the waves were too rough during our stay, even at low tide. Again, not the owner’s fault, but had really looked forward to exploring that…just unsafe and I’m an experienced, competitive swimmer.
The owner did make a concession due to the issues described above, mainly the broken gate. I understand it is hard to maintain stuff with all of the salt air and sea spray. If I find myself back in Kailua-Kona at some point, I’d probably just stay at a resort with more reliable maintenance staff.
-Jeff L.
Pennsylvania