The place had a smell that we didn’t realize until after a few days could be due to mold. A person in our party was dealing with a headache at the time and was unable to properly rest due to the smell, so that ultimately drove us to decide to move to another airbnb after 3 days. To be fair, we didn’t communicate this issue until we had already decided to move out, so in retrospect that was definitely a miss on our part and we will learn from that. But when we did eventually bring up the mold issue with the host, we were treated with a very rude response with baseless speculation:
“I had the house tested for mold less than 7 months ago, and of course there is mold (it’s everywhere in Hawaii), no black or other harmful molds were found…You might be very sensitive to smells, you might even have allergies being from a city and working in probably very controlled environment (working with computers), I do not see how this is my responsibility. Maybe more civilized Airbnb in a condo with air conditioning and hotels are for you guys.” (quoted directly from the host’s message)
It is irresponsible as a host to ignore it as mold allergies are not uncommon and can be caused by any type of mold(https://www.cdc.gov/mold/default.htm).
On the flip side, prior to this issue Panko and Eric were very welcoming hosts. They helped pull our car out of a mud patch on the first day when we overshot their driveway. They provided us with avocados, fruits, and coffee from their farm, which were all delicious.
Final note: the roads off of the main road to the place is very rough (unpaved, narrow, very bumpy); this is not mentioned in the airbnb listing. A high clearance vehicle is strongly recommended.