Margit runs the biz and cleaning side of things, she was great and made the space available for us a little earlier because of our noon arrival, however we didn’t see her, as I think she works in an office in paia managing other rentals like this. Rob was the host that lives on the property in the larger house, and was super nice. He accomplished that perfect balancing act of occasionally saying hi and shooting the shit for a second but at the same time leaving us alone to do our own thing. He let us walk the grounds and have whatever fruit from the trees we wanted, key limes, avocados, bananas, and blood oranges.
The upstairs bedroom is awesome, the glass slat windows and ceiling fan made it so that the lack of ac didn’t matter one bit (seriously). It lightly rained every night while we were sleeping (common in paia I guess) and it kept everything cool, but totally ceased by morning so as to afford us those beautiful paia beach days.
The down stairs was great, phuton couch and a big comfy chair with lots of windows and great views of the dense palm/banana trees rob has all over the property (feels extra tropical). There’s a Yamaha acoustic guitar should your picking fingers get itchy, the WiFi is fast and the tv streams entertainment (my wife at one point watched an episode of You on Netflix).
The kitchen is nice, came stocked with some OJ, banana bread, and local coffee. Electric burners on the stove, and a coffee maker as well as pots and pans and what not. If we were staying for a longer than a week, this might have come in handy, but we ended up eating out most of the time.
The garage is cool, Laundry (nice clean new ish machines) ping pong, lots of snorkel gear, kick boards, coolers, towels and beach chairs, pretty much anything you need to have a great beach day down at Ku’au Bay.
THE BEST PART IN MY OPINION:
so if you look at paia, on a map, there are the big beaches, Baldwin and Paia bay (we went to these, they’re super nice and NOT ultra crowded), but if you follow the coast line east you’ll see a beach by the montokuji mission (we didn’t manage to visit it), keep going east and then there’s Ku’au bay AKA Kaulaho beach AKA Tavares beach. I asked Rob about the multiple names, he said he didn’t know about kaulaho beach, knew that Tavares was and old mayor or something who had put his name on the beach, but told me that it, as well as the small area/ point that the house is on was locally referred to as Ku’au. When you go out the front door you’re greeted by a tunnel view of the ocean in the distance, walk the 50ish yards down The ultra lush, ultra private drive and you’ll come to a grave yard, here there are two choices, you can continue down the road to the right and there is a super mellow path that accesses the west end of he beach, or follow that little trail you see through the west side of the graveyard to a bench to sit for a second, before following a little cliff side path down through some vegetation to the beach. This part in the vegetation can be a little muddy and slick in the morning (especially if it rained during the night) but if you go slow, it’s fine, maybe 30 ft total. get down to the beach and you’ll see that everyone else for the most part accesses it from the parking lot by the now closed blue tile beach house on the was end. This is why rob’s property is so slick, you access this beach from the other end, and as a result encounter way fewer people if any. There is shade under the tree right at the trail, and the sand here is great.
When you’re done at the beach, use the outdoor shower. For privacy it’s on the opposite side of rental house from Rob’s place, and looks down then private drive to afford a view of the ocean in the distance. hot water here is HOT so be careful, I tried to jump in with some gnarly sunburn I had and treated the local wildlife to a litany of expletives. You’ll have to ask my wife for the review of the shower in the house though, because I didn’t use it.
All in all an amazing place to vacation. We have every intention of returning, and will recommend to friends considering a visit to the north shore.