Our host was very accommodating about when we could arrive and check in was easy. The location was beautiful and the décor is just as pictured. There are nearby parks and a rocky beach that is good for snorkelling if you know what you're doing. Some of the best tourist attractions of the Big Islands are a reasonable drive from Captain Cook, but this is more a town for locals. Captain cook is not a resort town. This is in a more private part of Captain Cook, not downtown as the presence of parks might imply. There is a grocery and other shops within a few minutes' drive.

The cottage was beautiful and private, although from most of the garden and part of the outdoor kitchen the host's house is easily visible. The garden is very pretty and well appointed with sitting areas and grill equipment.

The outdoor kitchen is very usable and has most of the cooking equipment you could want, although we did have to wash a lot of things - as would be expected from an outdoor kitchen. The one thing the kitchen is missing is a freezer, it has a fridge only.

Caveats, however, exist. The interior of the cottage is not separated by screens or glass windows from the outdoors. This means spiders, mosquitos, roaches, geckos (and this being a tropical island, there are plenty of them) and any other creature that can get in an open window can (and certainly will, if it rains) come in. The saving grace is the mosquito netting over the bed, which prevented us from getting eaten alive too badly in our sleep.

Similarly, there is no lock on the door, so we were pretty nervous leaving our valuables there when we went out. It's very rustic. It seemed that the interior of the cottage had not been cleaned in some time as well. We found dead bugs, spider-webs, and dust on and underneath most of the furniture and my wife had to clean to feel at home.

At one point during a rainstorm water started dripping through the roof onto my night stand. Lucikly, it was daytime and nothing water sensitive was there. I imagine I'd be pretty mad if my phone or camera or laptop had been placed there when this happened.