I think this place should be listed under Vacation Rentals, rather than Specialty Lodging or Hotels. We stayed at Kunquat Cottage for 12 nights while touring in the area. We chose it because we have dietary restrictions and needed a place with cooking facilities. There were few places of this type in San Ignacio to choose from. It was very difficult for me to rate Kunquat Cottage, as it had some very good qualities along with some definite drawbacks. I'll start with the positive aspects.

The cottage consists of four large rooms, uniquely decorated, including living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom and a large bathroom, with a shower big enough to accommodate six people. There is also a very large, landscaped garden area, where you can pick carambolas, mangoes and plantains if you're there in the rght season. There is even a very young kumquat tree.

The cottage is conveniently located about a five-minute walk from the center of town. The living room has a small, flat-screen television with cable, CD player, DVD player and a selection of CD's, DVD's and a few games. The dining room has a large table with four chairs and a computer with Internet (which was very uncomfortable to use because of its location on a low, small table). There is a large, rotating floor fan, which was sufficient to keep things comfortable during our stay (but might not be sufficient in hotter weather). The bedroom has a king-sized bed with huge pillows and a mattress, which I found a little too firm, but my husband thought was great. The room is air-conditioned, but we didn't need it ,as the temperatures were very comfortable and there is a fan. Changing the linens is a do-it-yourself affair, but there were lots of extra sheets and also good quality towels..

The kitchen has a gas stove and oven, full-size refrigerator, microwave coffee grinder and cappuchino machine, electric wok and frying pan sufficient dishes and utensils.

Both landline and cell telephones are available. You need to buy a BTL card in town to use these for outgoing calls.

Now for the drawbacks: Don't expect a good night's sleep, despite the comfortable bed. The neighborhood dogs make a racket all night long. And, if they happen to take a short break, you can hear the roosters crow. Loud church bells ring every morning at 6:05 and intermittently thereafter. Bring earplugs!

The only hot water was in the shower, which has an electic heating device. The bathtub water is supposed to be heated by a solar heater, but, even at the end of a sunny day, we were never able to get anything hotter than tepid water from the faucet. There is no hot (or warm) water in either the bathroom or kitchen sinks.

There were no mosquitoes when we were there, but I was bitten many times by sand flies, which are small enough to come through the screens. Over two weeks later, some of the bites still itch. Also, the large gap under the several doors to the outside enables other crawling and flying creatures to enter. We found tiny ants on the floor, counters and even the computer screen. I didn't mind the little lizards, but could have done without the spiders and beetles. A weekly spraying by the maintenance people might help alleviate this problem.

To get from any one room for another, you need to go up or down from one to four steps. While this isn't too bad during the day, it's quite dangerous at night -- to get from the bedroom to the bathroom, it's up two steps and down three in the dark (unless you like to sleep with the lights on), and the reverse getting back. I truly was grateful to get through our stay without falling.

As others have mentioned, to get to Kumquat Cottage from town, you need to go up a steep hill. With arms full of bags from the market and the sun beating down, this is not particularly pleasant.

There are no lauhdry facilities, just a clothesline outdoors (and no hot water to wash your things in, as I mentioned above). You need to wash things by hand or carry them into town and back to have them laundered at Martha's. When we arrived, there were only five clothespins, but more were brought during our stay. There was also only one extra bag for the garbage bin, which turned out to have a big hole in it. While more were brought a couple of days after we requested it, these things should be taken care of in advance of someone's rental.

It rained quite heavily the last couple of days of our stay, and there was a leak from the skylight in the living room area. Perhaps the owner was not aware of this, but I have informed him.