Big Sky Villa

The flat is in a handy spot for getting into town, and it has enough things for a small family to self-cater. The bathroom could use attention, though: there’s no light in the toilet, the shower door is broken, and there are little worms in the shower.

The house has what you need for a comfortable self-catering stay. It works especially well for a group of around 16, as long as the younger members are okay sharing the dormitory-style space upstairs.

A beautiful, very tidy house in a quiet spot. The host was friendly and helpful, and town is close enough to reach on foot. We had a really good stay.

Big Sky Villa felt unsafe and uncomfortable, and our month there turned into a terrible experience. We booked from 24th June to 24th July during lockdown, hoping for a quiet escape from the city. My husband was recovering from a serious motorcycle accident, with eight broken bones and a bad attitude, and my sister-in-law and her husband had both lost their jobs. We badly needed a break. The problems started at arrival. Rita, the letting agent at Seef property agents, showed us the house and quietly advised us to buy wood down the road for R12 a bag, instead of paying Nelia, the landlord, R20 a bag on the property. Nelia had negotiated the monthly price for the five-bedroom house down from R20,000 to R12,500. I suspect she meant to make up the difference by charging us extra. On 15th July, halfway through our stay, she banged on the door and yelled that because we’d slept in more than two beds, we had to pay more. Our contract never said that we could only use two bedrooms in a five-bedroom house. Then came unpleasant messages about an ornament we’d supposedly broken, though there were thousands in the house and I still don’t know which one she meant, and a window that broke in a storm. She sent two different invoices while we were still there, with random deposit amounts for a “breakage deposit” and then a “pet cleaning deposit”. She demanded payment “in 72 hours” and later “7 days on receipt”. In total, Nelia Retieff tried to charge us another R12,500 for using two additional beds. She also stopped paying the electricity bill, which covered the cleaning lady’s house on the property as well, leaving us to pay for it. The whole thing made our stay hell. We also felt watched the whole time. Nelia sent a cleaner on Monday, a gardener on Wednesday, and came herself on Fridays to clean the pool. We overheard the cleaner and gardener reporting on whether the towels were clean and if we’d washed the sheets ourselves. The correspondence and inspections happened during our stay, before any proper checkout inspection. It was horrible and made it hard to relax. Nelia should consider being a prison warden. Jokes aside, her behavior badly affected my family’s mental health, and I was disgusted by it. There were serious safety concerns, too. The DB board tripped constantly because it couldn’t handle the house’s electrical load, which is illegal. The front steps were so slippery in the rain that my husband, already injured, fell and smashed his head. The house wasn’t COVID-compliant at all: no hand sanitizer, thousands of unnecessary objects everywhere, and scatter cushions all over the place, which were totally illegal at the time. One Saturday night the neighbor held a party that ended with a man being beaten in the street outside the house, and we had to call the police. In her rush to make money, Nelia seemed to forget basic decency and treated us like cows to be milked. It was a horrible stay, and it wasn’t worth R12,500. The house is freezing, has no adequate built-in heating, and the kitchen is tiny and badly designed.