My husband and I were planning to spend the new year in the exotic Bahia Honda park.

We found this Ed &ellen's online and I booked it in middle December. After paid with credit card via Internet, I called this lodging, just to make sure. Ed I believe, who picked up the call, confirmed me that he can see my name on the reservation.

Funny enough, Ten days' later I received an email notifying the reservation just been cancelled for no reason. I would rather take it for a joke! I called Ed again who's murmured impatiently in the phone, saying he would check why he cancelled it and call me back. He might just had some beer as I could fully understand his English. Anyway, he never called me.

He cancelled our reservation So close to our arrival day, almost all the hotels in the lower keys have been fully booked.

Integrity is the foremost when conduct business, correct?

I stayed at E&E based on the recommendation of a friend who lives in Key Largo. I read the reviews on TA and was concerned about the things said. As it turned out, my stay was very good. Many of the review comments appeared to be from stays at their other facility further down the Keys.

First E&E is nothing more than a clean room, good beds, small kitchen with frig, microwave & stove, TV, A/C plus a clean bathroom with a decent shower. If you're looking for hotel amenities, this isn't the place. There appeared to be three similar rooms in the building I was in, labeled North, Middle & South. I stayed in the North room which had two double beds. There may be other rooms, but I did not see them. There was a BBQ grill and a picnic table outside, but it was too hot to consider using them.

Ellen came by daily and made up the bed, freshened the towels, etc.

The only negative was that the A/C unit was a bit noisy, but I'm a sound sleeper and it did not bother me. Plus it drowned out any noise from the highway in front of the facility.

There was no sign of bug infestation or excessive amounts of dirt in the room. This is Florida and there were a couple small bugs near the door, but nothing to become alarmed about. I checked carefully for bed bugs, as I do at every hotel, but there was no sign of any.

For the price, this was a great deal. I was on a scuba trip and all I was looking for was a place to sleep and shower. E&E filled that to a "T". I would return to their Key Largo facility without question.

This review is Two Parts.

First some background. I have stayed at Ed & Ellen's twice in Key Largo, 2007 then the second time this month. Key Largo's accommodations are affordable, clean, a good value and dated while somewhat charming. Ed has a "bubbly" personality with good humor and we had more than one enjoyable conversation.

The second part of this review is regarding Ed & Ellen's Big Pine Key duplex in which the first unit is lived in by the Manager. I found my two interactions with the manager to be friendly and helpful. Before moving to Big Pine from the Key Largo "B & B" I discussed previous negative tripadvisor reviews with Ed. His downplaying and humorous take on these reviews led me to believe there was little truth to them. After all, this is the keys, a tropical climate and and insect here and there is to be expected...
I should have known better.

Upon our arrival we were unpacking, me in the bedroom, my girlfriend in the living room when I heard a blood curdling scream. I immediately hurried to see what the problem was. I entered the living room to find her standing on a chair, pointing frantically and screeching, "I just saw a cockroach!" She was pointing at the foot of a sofa bed. Recalling my previous conversation with Ed on this subject I assured her (much to my later dismay) that an occasional insect is to be expected and not to worry about it. After some major discussion I convinced her to stay!

The second night we returned from Key West late and when I turned on the lights in the kitchen was surprised to find about 20 cockroaches of various sizes on the kitchen counter. After disposing of them with some paper towels, my girlfriend stormed out to the front porch yelling behind her as she walked off that I should have read the damned tripadvisor reviews like she told me to and "we wouldn't be staying in this dump." Still I was able to calm her down but this was NOT the romantic evening I had envisioned. In other words...

Night three: After a romantic day in Key West with a beautiful woman at my side a wonderful lunch at Martin's and dinner at Michael's we headed back late, I felt confident that this night would culminate in a night like we should have had the previous two nights there, a night to remember. We returned to the room glowing at the prospects at around 2:00am and she went straight to the bedroom to get ready for bed ;-)~ while I went to the kitchen to pour a Reserve 2007 Riesling I had been saving for just this occasion.

My expectations were once again dashed when I turned on the kitchen light and was greeted by a swarm of cockroaches in the kitchen and living room. I began stamping them with my feet when she returned to the room to see what all the noise was about. Needless to say by now I'm totally freaked out, she is screaming, "we have to get the F out of here NOW," and since I haven't seen cockroaches like this since my college days I'm right behind her apologizing profusely all the way. At least I hadn't uncorked the wine...

We packed in record time and were out of there in minutes. We began by quarantining our belongings into two sections, infected (anything in the rooms) and non-infected (everything in the car). The infected belongings were exiled safely to the trunk of the rental where they could do no damage.

Just prior to leaving we took the time to leave a little note for the on-site manager, paraphrasing..."It's 2:15 in the morning and we are out of here. There are roaches swarming in the kitchen and living room, please have Ed give us a call in the morning. Not happy!

As of this writing it has been over four days and "shocker" and we haven't heard from Ed, although I have a feeling we will be hearing from him soon. Had he had the simple courtesy to pick up the phone and discuss the "roach incident," as I had requested in my note, not only would I have possibly not written such a pointed review it is now out of my hands as he has managed to do something even dumber.....

Make my Puerto Rican girlfriend very angry...

She's gonna cost you.

P.S. I don't take pets on vacation and I don't expect to take them home with me!

My husband and I spent two nights at Ed & Ellen's in Key Largo. We didn't have reservations and this was available. Our only other option was to pay $250 a night elsewhere. It was centrally located (about a mile from John Pennekamp State Park where we snorkled) and had a small kitchenette. It was very basic. Since our expections were not for the Ritz, it was OK. For $79/night we felt lucky we didn't have to drive to Miami to find another place or sleep in the car.