Casa Cielo

Beautiful setting overlooking water. Casa accommodated three generations of family. All had a wonderful, memorable week. Caroline and Rob Heyer”

Beautiful but Disterbing

We have just completed our first 3D home experience at Casa Cielo or David Curls home at Playa Flamingo Costa Rica. This home is without question exceptional in its layout, size, beauty, and extraordinary views of Flamingo. Flamingo in its own right is a great paradise to explore and relax and this home is ideally located between many of Flamingo’s beaches and restaurants. I certainly plan to come back to this area. That said we unfortunately had bad timing thanks to a lightning strike just before our arrival that took out the home alarm system. I’m assuming the owner was anxious to restore the alarm given we had roughly 10 hours over a few days of disrupted vacation time while the Force One technician tried to fix it. By interrupted I mean we had to vacate the property while they ran tests due to motion sensors, door alarms, etc. Finally on our last night the alarm had apparently been repaired. A note had been left by the maid to let us know it was armed. When we opened the door to the family room/ kitchen to put in the disarming code the alarm went off. Despite entering the disarming code the alarm stayed on. This is not a low key alarm. It can be heard well outside the house. After several attempts to enter and disarm it we contacted the home administrator who could offer no other assistance than inputting the code they provided. Eventually a grounds security person showed up and attempted to disarm it without success. Finally we got hold of the Force One manager who talked me through a complicated procedure to override the alarm. After 15 minutes on the phone with Force One manager all attempts to disable it failed. He advised we needed to get into the locked alarm closet. Finally we got hold of one of the maids who had a key to the alarm room allowing the security guard to unplug it finally stopping the alarm. All told that alarm stayed on for at least 30 minutes leaving us with frazzled nerves to say the least. I know the alarm disablement was an act of nature and shit happens but through this whole ordeal we heard nothing, not even an apology for all of the hours / days this impacted our vacation not to mention our last night. I have been doing vacation rentals for four years. If this happened to one of my guests I would certainly have provided some kind of compensation like when the air conditioner system failed one summer. That’s only fair. All that aside I have some suggestions for the owner. Having the maid come at 8 am is disruptive. Even if he/she is working around the areas the guests are hanging out that impedes on one’s privacy. Again, there is no way I could have my cleaning crew show up at 8 in the morning unless my guests had requested that. If the issue is the cleaning of the house takes all day then the owner should hire a crew of two or three and start later in the day. For the record, the maid managed to trip the alarm while my wife was alone in the house. That was a scary experience for her. The same can be said for the grounds keeper. He is always up at 8 am taking care of some area of the yard. You have to be conscience of where he is while you are running the house in case you are not fully dressed. Again we didn’t feel like we had much privacy at the home. Given the size of the grounds I can understand the need for a gardener but they should remain out of site or limit when they are working while guests are still there. On the subject of grounds keeping there is a tree at the front of the home with branches extending over the master bedroom. This is a beautiful tree however it is dropping large cherry like fruit on the roof 24/7. At night it sounds like a giant pinball machine as the fruit hits the metal roof and then rolls around banging into something. In the middle of the night this can be unnerving. My wife also let me know that the house administrator showed up unannounced with a lady renting the home below who wanted to see Mr. Curl’s home. That put her on the spot. We would have appreciated if we had a heads up and could have been away. ”