Disappointing and Dirty
The best words to describe our stay here are disappointing and dirty. The disappointment was pretty surprising since the place has a lot of rave reviews.
On the positives, the view is stunning. The mountains, the valley and lush greens are incredible. The surrounding nature was a unique and wonderful feature of the property. The host was responsive about the stay and sending a lot of information in advance.
The negatives are all related to cleanliness.
The moment you walk inside, everything smells sweet and musty. All the fabrics like the the couch, the sheets, the curtains, all smell like this. We washed the towels a few times during our stay. A few washes with vinegar almost took out the mold smell…I dried my face with paper towel. The couch smelled liked a dorm room couch on its umpteenth owner.
All the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen have a very strong musty smell when you open them. The smell wafts. It really grossed me out to smell this where the plates, glasses, and silverware are. When we first arrived, we cleaned all the items we knew we were using. We also wiped down the cabinets. The wipes all came back with thick black gunk.
My husband cleaned the shower as well. The inside shower door had a film of black stuff on the bamboo. We doubt this was scrubbed in a while.
We were searching for where the mustiest smell is coming from - it turned out to be the washer. The rubber ring by the door had a super moldy odor. I used at least 6 Clorox wipes to clean that part and each one came back black as the night sky. It still smells musty.
Overall, it’s difficult to get comfortable at a place when it smells the moment you walk in and you know it’s really dirty. Also, who wants to spend a chunk of their vacation cleaning?
For the first day or two, we tried to spend more time outside and appreciate the beautiful nature. Unfortunately, we were feasted upon by spindly ravenous mosquitos. It pinches when you’re bit and the bites are super duper itchy. A few of them got in the house…so you’re bitten all night. We probably have about 5-10 active itchy bites every day. When one stops being itchy, we’re bit by another one.
It’s great to have a private pool and hot tub. It was just really hard to enjoy when the paint is peeling and knowing that you’re submerging yourself in a body of water maintained by the same people who maintain the house. I just had a roiling feeling in my stomach that I couldn’t ignore. Plus the negative of the bugs.
The road closure at Hanalei was workable, but very inconvenient. If we wanted to leave Hanalei, we had to leave by 7am and come by at 5:30pm. There’s a short window in the early afternoon too, but that didn’t work for the activities we were doing. Frankly, we were happy to be out of the house all day. The smells were too much!
I think this property has the potential to be amazing. But to spend $2500 for 5 days in a dirty place is too much for us. To be fair, the bug and road situation are not in their control, but cleanliness is 100% in their control.
We didn’t communicate the cleanliness problem to the host. It wasn’t a one item cleanliness problem - it was a whole house problem. It was frankly easier to avoid the place and stay out as much and as long as possible.
I was very surprised that this didn’t come up in any one else’s review for the property. We’re now at a different Airbnb in Maui. It’s clean and nice to come home to.