Mangobird Villa - Review Page 1
Reviewed by Steve & Jill Wooler in February 2007
Mangobird Villa is a fully air-conditioned holiday villa located on the popular Bon Accord villa development. Crown Point International airport is just 5-minutes away.
The property features three en suite bedrooms plus a smaller ‘child’ bedroom. The villa would be ideally suited to a family of up to six adults, two children and a baby. The villa has a decent-sized swimming pool with integrated Jacuzzi and is set in relatively small but mature private gardens. It is little more than an eight or nine minute walk to the start of the Pigeon Point peninsula and its white sand beaches.
Location
Every visitor to Tobago will have noticed the Bon Accord villa development. After leaving the untidy sprawl of the airport, the road passes the Coco Reef Resort hotel and then makes a sharp right turn at the junction with Pigeon Point Road. You are now on the Milford Road – the main road to Scarborough (and everywhere else). Within a few hundred yards you will notice the impressive new villas on the left. Take the first turning, opposite the highly popular and thoroughly recommended House of Pancakes, and you enter the popular Bon Accord villa development.
Many houses on the development are holiday rental properties. Others are the homes of local professional and business people. The villas are more impressive than the roads connecting them. 
Nevertheless, the development has an up-market feel and an air of quiet calm.
Mangobird Villa is within reasonable walking distance of a number of beaches, restaurants, mini-marts and small shops. However, as in all our reviews, we must stress that your own transport is advisable if you are to get the best out of Tobago, and particularly so if you are travelling with young children (for which Mangobird is ideally suited). Walking in the heat of the sun is no joy when carrying bags of groceries or with impatient toddlers by your side. Why make your holiday hard work?
The south-western coral-bed ‘lowlands’ of Tobago may not be the island’s most beautiful area, but they are undoubtedly the most popular in terms of general facilities and as a base from which to explore the island. With your own transport, nearly every good Tobagonian restaurant is within a ten-minute drive of Mangobird Villa. The island’s biggest supermarket is just three or four minutes away. A wide choice of beautiful Caribbean beaches is within fifteen minutes (the most popular beaches, Pigeon Point and Store Bay, are less than five minutes away). Both of the island’s golf courses are within 10-minutes. You are ideally located to tour every part of this beautiful island.
Architecture
Mangobird is a new concrete two-storey building of attractive design. I detect hints of Spain or Mexico. Several other villas share the same design, but this in no way detracts from their appearance. More than half of the Bon Accord estate is dominated by five or six standard designs, the primary difference being the colour of the exterior walls and window shutters. Most of these properties are attractive and enhance the overall feel of the development but, as in all things, there is always someone who has to be ‘different’ and who demonstrates poor taste in their choice of 
exterior colours. Mind you, this makes it easy to find Mangobird Villa: simply look for the house we call Diarrhoea Villa and then continue to the end of the cul-de-sac.
Mature hedges surround Mangobird and provide both privacy and security. Despite not having sea views and being technically on the Caribbean side of the island, the property is also very close to the Atlantic coast and therefore benefits from the north-east trade winds that fan the flat south-western tip of Tobago, having been cooled by thousands of miles of Atlantic Ocean.
Two five-inch steps lead up to the covered terrace that runs along the front of the villa. Wheelchair ramps are provided at each end. A 9-inch step leads from the terrace into the villa itself (the owners tell me that they will organise a portable ramp on their next visit). Once inside the villa, there is ground floor twin bedroom with adjacent bathroom. The property could therefore be ideally suited to those with physical impairment or who are wheelchair-bound.
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