Great location on Anini beach. We loved being able to walk across the street and hang out at the beach. We stayed home and cooked most nights and loved relaxing to the jungle sounds outside of the house.
The roosters woke us up at 4am every day, but that happens on a lot of the island.
The bedroom was incredibly mildewed and the place needed quite a lot of maintenance. It was so bad that the bedroom was unusable and we switched to the living room day bed to avoid the horrible smell in the other side of the house.
We enjoyed our stay but if we had 4 people instead of 2, it would have been a nightmare. We aired out the bedroom with fans pointed out the window all week and by the end of the week it was much cleaner smelling in there. It took several days to be anything we would consider hanging out in, much less sleeping in. The ceiling fans on the mildewed side of the house were at low speed and we couldn't get them to work properly. It seems many of the lights in that side of the house are wired incorrectly.
It was fantastic to have our own little parking spot. Loved having lots of beach towels and the washer and dryer. Kitchen had everything we needed (blender, knives, dishes), but a lot of things needed re-washed before we could use them. Boyfriend ended up fixing the dishwasher that was obviously broken (flooded inside). Some of the slotted windows were broken and couldn't open but we fixed those too. Felt lucky that the boyfriend does that for a living otherwise we would have had a bit of a crummy stay or needed some maintenance people to come. The house definitely needs some attention.
They leave you a note saying just to call them if the internet isn't working but yeah, the internet was definitely not actually working. I used my phone signal all week but the mobile data speeds there were very slow (AT&T) but Verizon wasn't working at all. We have installed the same internet system at home and theirs is definitely set up incorrectly, so it's useless to just call and have them reset it. We know firsthand that you have to fix the system or you have to keep resetting it every few hours. That's definitely happening with their system, so we didn't bother. We weren't trying to be on the internet much anyway, but if you have the same problem, they are willing to keep resetting it for you (the router is in the house next door).
This house was a place that made us feel like we lived on the island. If you're looking for a fancy experience, this isn't it, but it's nice and homey. For the same price we stayed in some much nicer places, but we had a great time while we were here at Anini and got into the ocean a lot.
It's close enough to everything on the north shore and was a nice home base.