Hibiscus Heights - Review Page 2
Warm Breezes
Without question, Warm Breezes is the piece de resistance of Hibiscus Heights. Occupying the entire upper floor of the house, this lovely apartment offers a spacious 2700sq.ft./243sq.m. (gross, including balconies but excluding pool area) of well decorated and equipped accommodation. It represents a wonderful holiday home-away-from-home for a family or small group. Despite being such a short walk from an excellent beach, the apartment even has its own small but usable swimming pool, located directly behind the apartment on the upper floor of the house.
Having negotiated the steep driveway and climbed three flights of stairs with a total of 34 steps, you immediately appreciate the benefits of being at the top of the house. As you pause to catch your breath (well, you do at my age), you cannot fail but to be impressed by the wonderful views across Stone Haven Bay and Courland Bay. The palms and foliage hide the beach, but you can see the waves breaking over the rocky foreshore, so your close proximity to the beach is in no doubt.
A wide wrap-around balcony and roof overhang shades the house and ensures that all rooms remain cool and breezy. Not that a huge amount of help is needed – the house faces north-east, directly into the prevailing winds.
The 3-metre (9ft) entrance to the apartment has fold-back wooden louvered doors. These ensure that occupants of the 51m2 living area enjoy the views. The feeling of space is further enhanced by an open wooden ceiling rising to 4.9 metres.
The walls of the room are painted in a cool pale olive with white highlights and ceiling. Starkness is relieved by attractive local paintings and attractive mobiles of shells and drift wood – or ‘dangly things’ as I call them. The living/dining area is dominated by a group of comfortable and attractive padded rattan armchairs and couches that could seat up to ten adults. A small cable television set with DVD player and high-quality CD-player, are close at hand for evening entertainment. A wide range of decent films and discs are provided. Warm Breezes has its own telephone line.
Between the seating area and the kitchen is a formal dining table. Somewhat heavy and ornate in appearance, it will not be to everyone’s taste but does add a certain grandeur to the room. The dining table will seat six people in comfort. It became my office for the week of our stay.
Although not furnished as a breakfast bar, a range of kitchen units separates the kitchen from the rest of the living/dining room. Flanked by a long range of two-tier storage cupboards, there is certainly no lack of storage space, although, in truth, we found the cupboards so full of kitchen utensils, crockery and other essentials that we hardly found space to store our own food supplies. We were particularly impressed by the stock of extras like olive and vegetable oils, sugar, salt and pepper mills, paper towels and napkins and kitchen foil and cling-film wrap available in all the apartments – the sort of things that short-stay holiday visitors should not need to buy, but which very few apartment or villa owners think to provide. Each of the three Hibiscus Heights apartments benefitted from these extras, not just Warm Breezes.
The kitchen has a large six-burner gas stove (but no grill/broiler), a large fridge with freezer compartment, microwave, toaster, kettle, liquidiser and juicer. There is an extensive range of kitchen utensils, cutlery, crockery and glassware.I won't say ‘everything you could need' because that is tempting fate, but it is certainly as well equipped as you could expect a holiday apartment to be. Everything was in excellent maintenance order and clean and inviting to use. The apartment is fully equipped for six people plus, so you won't be washing up all the time.
The living room is not air-conditioned, nor does it need to be. It benefits from a lovely through draft, particularly if the rear kitchen windows and door are left open. Even the two large overhead fans were largely unnecessary during our stay.
To the rear of the kitchen is a small utility room with washer and dryer – and a large tub of detergent (it is surprising how many apartmentand villa owners ignore laundry supplies, forcing 
visitors to purchase detergents in boxes far larger than needed for the average duration of a holiday). Needless to say, an ironing board and steam iron were also available.
The bedrooms are located on either side of the living/dining area, with the master bedroom separated from the other two. This is great. It means that mum and dad can make as much noise as they like without disturbing (or embarrassing) the kids. Given the age of our family, it was arguably the other way around.
The master bedroom is almost as large as the living room – a massive 10.5 x 4 metres (42sq.m.). This is larger than any standard hotel room on the island.The room is very elegant and features a superbly comfortable king-size bed with four poster decorative canopy/mosquito net. The furnishings are primarily of rattan and include bedside tables with lamps, a six-drawer dressing table and mirror, plus two chairs and a sofa but still manages to look uncluttered. Two wide double doors provide access onto the wrap-around balcony. The windows are fitted with traditional wooden louvers that keep the room shaded, but not dark.
To the rear of the bedroom is a large walk-in wardrobe and en suite bathroom. Given the massive size of the bedroom, it came as no surprise to find that the wardrobe provided a massive five metres of full-length clothes hanging space and storage shelves. Despite having clothing for an eight-week stay, we made little impression on the wardrobe.
It was a nice touch to find a pair of cosy bath-robes and extra pillows and blankets in the wardrobe of each of the three bedrooms.
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