We stayed here for 4 nights over Easter. The place takes one's breath breath away, they also upgraded our room to the Grouper room (room 8) - to be recommended. Kelly, Paul and the team do a great job of ensuring that one has a great time, and this is a place for peace and quiet! Lovely walks and great diving as well. And we had a great butler, Arao, who quickly learnt our likes and dislikes, great guy. A great team, and a great diving instructor, Heike.

The dinners were lovely, every night in a different setting, very romantic. The food is mostly unfortunately very average, and the chef needs to be told that one can use dried herbs, not only fresh (if unavailable), one can only eat that much pan-fried fish with NO herbs or spices. Breakfast was great, one can take meals in your cottage as well (but why make a Prego with minced meat - a novelty!).

I would suggest Nespresso machines in the room as well.

It is however quite a mission to get to Quilalea Private Island (3 flights from Johannesburg, takes a day), but worth it! Just dont trust CFA charters, try to avoid them, they sold us a ticket 5 days prior on a 11h55 flight and then advised the lodge the day before that we have now been transferred to an 8h20 flight! They oversold the other flight, it still left at 11h55, and they just refer one to their standard disclaimer that says they can switch your flights at will! And this on our last day when we wanted to snorkel and say good-bye to Quilalea, we had to have breakfast at 6 am! This spoiled our visit to a large extent, if you can arrange another way of getting there, do it! We were up at 6am and got to Johannesburg at 7pm, not a pleasant day.

Go there, even if you rather have to take a dhow/boat!

I visited Quilalea a short while after it had opened and you wouldn't have known it was so new. The management & staff were fantastic, always smiling and could never do enough to help you. They looked after you but also left you alone in the right measures. We were in Villa Quilalea which is absolutely stunning with a plunge pool and a bath to die for! The villa is built on a coral cliff and has its own ladder from which you can climb down straight from the cliff into the clear sea.

The island is surrounded by a marine park where pristine coral is teaming with fish is just metres from your villa. Every guest is given their own mask, snorkel and flippers when they arrive which means that they can go off exploring the coral reef whenever they want. The diving is also fantastic with a 20m drop off wall just off the main beach. I had some amazing dives swimming with turtles....although the dive master then emailed to say he had swum with a pod of 10 dolphin the day after I left ;-((

The food was delicious with incredible fresh fish, salads, crab, lobster & prawns but what was even more enjoyable was the effort the team put into varying the dining experience. We never ate dinner in the same place twice. One night we had a candlelit dinner on the beach, the next in the wine cellar then a romantic meal in our villa....all set up absolutely beautifully!

The lovely thing about Quilalea is that with only 9 villas, it feels like your own private island and yet the island is big enough to escape if you want to. We spent an idyllic day on Turtle beach the other side of the island with only our picnic basket and the fish and crabs for company!

I would highly recommend Azura at Quilalea to anyone who is looking for a fantastic beach holiday & more. The privacy of the island and what it has to offer means that there is so much to do there that even for the busiest of people, they will find plenty to keep themselves occupied!