We had a great stay at Bamboo Retreat! The house is cozy and well-stocked with darn near everything one could want.
We cooked almost all of our meals, and found all the things we needed, including an abundance of measuring cups, spoons and serving bowls. We didn’t use the coffee-maker with integrated blender, but appreciated knowing it was there. We did use the rice cooker/steamer.
The round table in the kitchen was great for breakfasts, and we enjoyed the dining table in the living room for our dinners. The couches were cozy, especially with the addition of the fleece throw blankets. It can get damp, and I understand we were there during particularly cool weather, but we scrounged firewood and used our extra Costco boxes for fire starters to enjoy crackling fires in the wood stove.
I’ve been “upcountry” in Hawai’i before, and know it can be a bit chilly, so I usually make to sure I have an electric heating pad available to warm my bed. I did appreciate it this trip too, although there was plenty of bedding and lots of extra pillows.
We synched our computer and watched a couple of movies on the large screen TV, and used the Apple TV to “screen mirror” some yoga and other exercise videos when it was rainy out. Did I mention we were there during a “stay at home” order due to SARS- Cv2 (Covid-19)? We didn’t really notice we were “social distancing”.
We had arrived before the virus started affecting things, and elected to stay where we were rather than rush home. Mike graciously allowed us to incrementally extend our stay as we monitored the situation locally as well as back home.
Our daily visitors were neighboring chickens; a few sheep came by fairly often and so did a mama pig with her piglets. We could have closed the gate to minimize some of these visitors, but we enjoyed their antics.
The property is homey rather than “landscaped”, per se. It has a nice grassy lawn where we did our morning tai chi, and the entire back side of the house is bracketed by stately tree ferns. We also enjoyed the abundant fruits of what might be a pomelo... one ancestor of grapefruit (which is a hybrid of pomelo and sweet orange). Anyway, it was a kind of “lemony grapefruit” which we greatly enjoyed.
We made good use of the laundry facilities in the basement, and the neighbor who acts as caretaker was very responsive when we needed anything. And, as it turns out, the Hirano Store at the bottom of the street on Volcano Highway is an excellent small market. They even had toilet paper! (No more than two rolls per customer please. No hoarding. Thank you.)
And thank YOU, Mike, for hosting us!