Parrot Estate Villa - Reader Reports & Opinion

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Guest Report

Dr Stefan Rustscheff from Sweden visited in June 2003 and awarded Four out of Five

Parrot estate is owned by mr Jean Guye of Switzerland, a man with a deep love of Tobago and a wealth of information about the Island. The house itself is immaculately upkept and his staff of gardener and cleaners very proficient.Mr Guye also naturally expects his guests to show reasonable respect for the property. The house has a very good overall plan and a lovely gazebo. It has fans, but no aircondition and no pool. It has a lot of hammocks, a nice large well-kept garden stocked with fruit trees and lovely flowers and hummingbirds and also a fence and gate for security. I enjoyed every minute of my two-week stay even though a pool to cool off in would have been even nicer. Mr Guye as such gave tremendous assistance and good advice and also took time to call from Switzerland to ckeck if we were fully pleased with everything.

The villa is quite far off the beaten track although there now are 9 houses in the 45-acre vicinity.It is just a 4 minute drive to Englishman´s bay and has a view to die for.

Parrot Estate Villa - Very Highly Recommended 30 Jan 2005

Juliette Nash from London

We wanted to recommend this villa where we spent a superb week in October.

The villa is above Englishman's Bay with views of the Bay and rainforest. This is a great place to be, near enough to Castara for all its facilities but out of town and utterly peaceful. It also appeared to be very well situated if you wanted to do any good walking up and across the ridge. There was lots of local guides, I am guilt-ridden because I have forgotten the name of our (very nice) guide, but we found him on the road coming into Bloody Bay from the Windward Side direction with his mother(?) who had cakes.

The villa was huge for four people (and therefore super-huge for just two of us). It was extremely well designed and practical. The kitchen was superbly fitted out (just a coincidence that the owner is a French-speaker?) and we were able to make excellent food. The garden was beautiful. It was also very easy - good facilites, snorkeling gear to borrow etc.

There is a "gazebo" where we spent most of our time watching the birds and bats and playing backgammon. This is especially useful in the wet season when you just watch the rain for hours. (nice in a way).

No pool, but that simplified things and kept the price down. Also, the beautiful beach is very near, so who needs chlorine? The beach was a little steep for small children but great for everyone else. There was supposed to be good snorkelling but the viz was lousy when we were there (the rain I presume). Nice, very friendly cafe.

Buying food - we worked out that it's best to go to Scarborough for vegetables, nice drive and you can give local ladies a lift from the roadside, we had quite a haul by the time we got to town. At Scarborough market, the people were the friendliest we met, the choice is much better and you can get Italian ice cream ([i:2sjppybp]and Illy coffee[/i:2sjppybp]) in town. Fish is super-slow at Castara and faster at Parlatuvier. Tasted glorious where-ever.

The owner John was very friendly and very very efficient, right down to ringing us when we arrived. Very concerned to make his guests happy and comfortable.

For anyone worried about security in isolated villas, (sad to have to put this down) there are other villas in sight, there is a phone line and mobiles have a signal so we had no worries at all.

Any disadvantages? Not really. Of course you don't get to be in the middle of a community and see village life.

We thought that by Tobago standards it was excellent value and would recommend it for one or two couples or a family. We don't have children so we don't look at things which parents might notice but I thought that it looked good for kids, the garden has some terracing, but then again, it is on a hill. I shall always remember the nights in utter silence under the full moon watching the bats, the lights of ships out at sea and the smell of the tropics....

Read the 7 replies

Parrot Estate Villa,englishman's Bay 19 Sep 2004

Simon Osborne from Wirral, England

I am planning to book two weeks at this villa for my family;it looks and sounds just the sort of place we are looking for. Has any member of this site stayed there/ knows of it? If so please post your comments.

Many thanks

Simon