This house has the potential to be amazing, but at the time of our stay it simply wasn't ready to be rented out to paying guests, and did not live up to the 'luxury' description in the listing.
We were apparently the first people to stay in the house under these owners. Upon arrival the host informed us that the air conditioning was not working downstairs. This was problematic because due to the large numbers of insects we couldn't have the doors open downstairs so it was extremely hot. He also told us that the dishwasher wasn't working. He offered to send someone to periodically wash the dishes but for us this wasn't really a workable solution.
On the first night of our stay there was no hot water. We told our host the next morning and he advised us to use the back up system and that he would send his dad to check out the problem. While waiting for his dad to arrive we also experienced a problem with the flush mechanism of the toilet in the main bathroom - water ran continuously meaning the cistern never filled and the toilet could not be flushed.
The host's dad arrived and gave us assurances that we would have hot water by that evening (the main system is solar powered so we would have to wait during the day for the water to heat up). He also fixed the broken flush. As a gift he brought us a bunch of flowers and some doughnuts.
That evening there was still no hot water from either the main (solar) system or the backup (electrical) system. We informed the host and he said he would send someone the next morning. During this time we needed to bath our baby so we boiled saucepans of water but when we poured these into the bath they immediately drained out. On inspection we saw that the seal on the plug was broken so the bath could not hold water.
That evening we also noticed that some of the plaster had fallen from the ceiling onto our bed below, luckily we weren't in bed at the time. The host said he would fix the plug and offered to have this (apparently new) plaster removed from the ceiling so that no more would fall. We said this was not necessary as we didn't want to face the disruption.
The next morning the handy man arrived but he could not fix the problem with the hot water. Later that morning an engineer came and found that the solar water system had leaked over the electrical water system, hence both hot water systems not working. He fixed the electrical system but we had by this point been without hot water for around 40 hours. We now had hot water but because running the air conditioning (upstairs only) and the electrical hot water system simultaneously was too much of a drain on the power supply, we were now in a position where we had to choose between hot water and air conditioning, a situation which remained until the end of our stay.
At this point we had a phone conversation with the host. In addition to the specific problems as described above we were also disappointed with the property in general. The host hadn't given us a manual so the upstairs air conditioning and oven were quite difficult to use, we didn't know where to leave rubbish etc. Although the house is beautiful some things remained unfinished, for example bare electrical wires were hanging out of some of the bathroom walls. The garden could also be fantastic but the garden furniture is very old and shabby and some of it (chair, sunlounger and umbrella) is broken. There are building materials and debris around the garden and many dead plants. Early in our stay we spoke to the host about the cleanliness of the pool. We found there was a lot of silt/sand on the bottom and the surface was always dirty. The host said the filter which comes on three times a day for two hours at a time should take care of this, it didn't, we needed to clean the surface of the pool several times a day. The host offered to send someone to look at this but we declined not wanting more disruption.
Later in the week we attempted to wash our clothes and they came out covered in grey sludge and one item was ripped. When we inspected the seal around the washing machine door we saw it was full of sludge and debris, I don't think it had been cleaned in a long time. The drawer was also mouldy.
On our penultimate day the toilet flush broke again resulting in another visit from the handyman.
As the various problems occurred during our stay, the host was very quick to respond to us and try and find solutions, although these were not always workable. He also suggested we might want to cancel our stay and Airbnb would help us find another property, but travelling with a baby means a lot of luggage - packing up, moving and unpacking would have wasted another day of our holiday when we had already spent so much time dealing with problems. We opted to stay - with the benefit of hindsight I think we should have moved.
If the host is able to address all the issues with the house and garden I think this would be a lovely place to stay, but unfortunately our stay was ruined by the problems we encountered and we returned to the UK having had a very stressful experience.