My husband and I spent 4 days at Coconut Cove from August 26 – 29, 2011. Prior to our arrival I had made several phone calls for room details, menus etc. On each occasion my inquiries were promptly and pleasantly answered.

What can I say? We arrived at Coconut Cove and were blown away by the many potholes filled with rain water that dotted the road to the property. They were so daunting that our resilient personal driver decided that she was afraid to drive into them loaded down with people and luggage and was afraid of getting stuck. I called the owner who came down in his car, worked with us to transfer our luggage and drove us to the property. While we were grateful for the service, bottom-line, all it would take would be a couple trucks of gravel to make that situation better for arriving guests. It’s all in the details as I always say and first impressions count.

We’d been warned a month earlier that “the credit card machine was down, so bring cash”. We brought cash. The more cynical side of me suspects that having seen their rooms, there would be lots of credit card charge backs from disappointed guests. Cash greatly reduces that likelihood. But that’s just me!

We’d requested a second floor room with a king bed. We were placed in D’Chaconia Room with a Queen bed (no kings are available). It’s probably easiest to do a list of pros/cons for my review of this property so here goes:

Pros
· Friendly and responsive owner

· Great location – it was great to wake up and go to bed to the sound of waves

· Some meals were OK like Saturday lunch (pumpkin rice, stewed peas) Sunday breakfast (bakes, salt fish, corned mutton) Sunday lunch (macaroni pie, calalloo, stewed chicken)

· Wireless worked OK for the most part (you need a code)

· Lots of cool sea breezes


Cons
· Scary potholes at entrance to road where resort is located

· Some meals were not very good (rubbery, non-yellow eggs at breakfast; cold turkey bacon, etc)

· Rooms and service need some major TLC – we arrived to an a/c unit that struggled to keep us cool, torn patches in bed spread, uncomfortable bed, no shower head, no toilet paper, no towels, no washcloth)

· When we eventually got towels they had rust stains on them. I kid you not! We never got a washcloth. BTW, the shower was a joke! That thing sputtered like you'd never believe. My husband finally gave up on using his body wash and a pouffe because he could never get suds going with the sputtering shower head!

· No daily room cleaning unless requested

· Few chairs around pool, the ones that are there are majorly heavy and uncomfortable

· Limited shade – a few umbrellas would be great and would help to make guests more comfortable

· Walls are very, very thin. Our next door neighbor watched movies all weekend and we knew the plots to all of them!

· No TV service – you need a cable to access DVD player which we didn’t have, no one offered it, so we watched our DVDs on our laptop.

· I’d reconsider swimming in the pool. I twice saw a female staff member talking on a cell phone who walked about the property barefoot, then dipped her feet in several times one night. I wish I had my camera handy.

· Be careful of ants. We kept our luggage off the ground on chairs and our snack bags on the table. Even so, there were ants around. It wouldn’t hurt to have a can of insecticide with you.

The food was OK for the most part, so it probably makes sense to go with the meal plan, since there are no other dining options in the area that we could see.

A big issue that I forgot to mention ... the door had one lock that was really iffy. There was no security bar like at every hotel (even motel) we've stayed in. One swift kick and we would have had "visitors" joining us in our room. We actually placed luggage behind the door and hung clothes hangers on the door handle so we would be alerted if someone tried to break in. I'm pretty fearless but, we would have been foolish to not be concerned about the weak door and lock.

Coconut Cove succeeds because it apparently has lots of local support (sold out during the time we were there), it has a great location and apparently its guests have less demanding tastes. While OK for a weekend getaway, I really couldn’t see an out-of-the-country tourist arriving with the intention of spending their entire time at the property. IMHO there are too many rough edges to make this a “resort”.

At the end, the owner arrived as we were leaving and asked how things were. What could I say? Coconut Cove is what it is. I’m not sure listing a bunch of my concerns to him would help much. The simple fact that we arrived a month after making a reservation and our room still had no shower head, no toilet paper, no towels etc is a good indicator of this "resort's" attention to detail. I even called the day before to confirm our arrival.

I have taken the time to itemize issues here, so that potential guests have the real picture and are not surprised like we were. I have no issues with a property having lax quality, but I passionately believe that visitors should know the issues beforehand, so they can make an informed decision as to whether they should spend their vacation dollars there.

BTW, you will notice that many of the pictures of the "resort" show the outside environment? That's a good clue IMHO!

All in all, we didn’t have a truly miserable time, but by the same token, would we go back? That’s doubtful. HTH

As always, feel free to PM me with any detailed questions about the "resort" or Trinidad in general.

Happy travels, everyone!