Staying here was a bit of a mixed bag for us. The guesthouse is very clean, modern and thoughtfully decorated (a pleasant beach theme), with a really nice spacious bathroom and bedroom. The hosts very generously provided quite an amazing amount of complimentary food items in the fridge, pantry and fruit bowl - altogether a lot more than we’ve ever seen in a rented bach, so if you forgot your groceries you wouldn’t even need to go shopping for a day or so! It’s a very short walk to the beach across a quiet street, and if the weather or water quality doesn’t allow for swimming (this unfortunately happened when we were there), just spending a quiet afternoon on the couch reading or watching TV is quite relaxing.
We were a bit surprised at a few things the photos don’t clearly show though. The guest car park provided is directly off the road, but the guesthouse is at the back of the property behind the main house, so you need to carry your suitcases etc down a path past the main house to get there. It’s probably no problem for most people, but we tend to bring a lot of stuff with us on holiday so it felt a bit embarrassing for us! We thought from the listing which says “you will have your own car park and access” that access would be private, but you basically need to walk through the hosts’ backyard. We probably wouldn’t describe the guesthouse as exactly “private” either - the main house overlooks the bedroom (but you can close the curtains, which we did), and on the other side of the guesthouse when you look out from the dining/lounge area, you are looking out across about half a dozen backyards (the guesthouse sits slightly higher up than the neighbouring properties). This gives it a very suburban feel, and honestly our home in the suburbs in Auckland feels significantly more private.
From all the glowing reviews about Kathy & Bryon we’re sure they must be very nice people, but quite honestly we think they must have had some sort of other pressing situation on their minds when we stayed, although perhaps they were just preoccupied with grandchildren who were visiting them. It was just that we didn’t feel exactly welcome, more like we were kind of imposing, and that made us feel a bit uncomfortable. We’re not sure if perhaps they felt displeased that we had asked via text a few days beforehand if we could have a late checkout, or if the fact that we wore masks on arrival perhaps put them off us or made them concerned we were sick (we weren’t - we put the masks on because we thought under the circumstances it would be the most polite thing to do). We are not at all the sort of guests who expect hosts to entertain us, and for the most part we much prefer to be left to ourselves, but we thought a little bit of friendly small talk with them upon our arrival and when we encountered them on the property (e.g. So how’s your holiday been going? Do you have everything you need?) would have gone a really long way towards making us feel more welcome. Instead interaction was kept to an absolute bare minimum, and even that seemed rather reluctant. All we could put it down to was that perhaps the current Covid climate makes them feel that even chatting from a distance is risky, or that we inadvertently offended them in some way, or that they were preoccupied with grandchildren or with some other more important situation than having Airbnb guests.
We still left a card and a couple of chocolates to thank them when we left, and thanked them via text too, neither of which elicited any response. It seems our experience is outside the norm given the other reviews, but we wouldn’t stay again.