My wife and I stayed at Pelican House in early May 2011 for a week. Overall we had a good time, although there were a few drawbacks to the house as well. Sorry in advance if this review seems long, but I thought there were a lot of topics to cover that I hadn’t seen mentioned in previous reviews.
We ended up renting a car for our week on St. Lucia, mostly because we like to have the flexibility of going where we want, when we want. Driving to Marigot from the Vieux Fort airport took a little over an hour, and the main road has many areas where the road has a lane closed due to washouts from last year’s Hurricane Tomas. A few white knuckles aside, the ride wasn’t horrible, and the car park at the bottom of the hill just before getting to “downtown” Marigot Bay is free for guests. (At least I THINK it’s free…the owner told me it was, but a local told me I needed to pay $2/US to park there, and there was a money box on the side of the park that requested payment, but it was unclear whether that was for day-trippers to Marigot, or for everyone.) From the car park it’s about a 30 second walk to the ferry pier, a 1 minute ride across the bay on the ferry, a short walk along the beach and through Doolittle’s before a short but steep walk up the hill to Pelican House. Depending on how long you have to wait for the ferry (usually no more than 2-3 minutes), getting from the car to the house takes about 5-7 minutes total.
We liked the location of Pelican House, on the North (quiet) side of Marigot Bay. The house has amazing views of the Bay, and has wonderful landscaping all around. The living area, which has been explained before, is a large open-air, covered porch, and allows for unobstructed views of the bay as well as pleasant breezes to keep the house cool. The house is situated a little more than halfway up the hill on the north side of the bay, and while there is a small tram you can take to get up the hill, we found it much faster and very easy to simply walk the steps up to the house. The bedrooms are all large enough to accommodate 2 people comfortably, and each has its own bathroom as well. The kitchen is plenty large enough, and has a large fridge, gas oven/stove, microwave, coffee pot, and toaster oven. We cooked dinner in the house a few nights and the kitchen had more than enough cookware and dining utensils to cover our needs. There is also a small coal-pot grille outside, although you’ll need to find your own charcoal to use it.
There were a few drawbacks, and while this may sound like nitpicking to some, it was information I wish I had seen before we booked. First, there are mosquitoes at Pelican House. (It was interesting that none of the reviews on Trip Advisor talked about mosquitoes, while about 50% of the people who signed the guest book in the house mentioned them.) Because of the design of the house, which has most of the living area in the open air without screens, the mosquitoes were free to swarm and bite whenever you were there. I got bit at least 7-10 times per day, and it forced us to spend almost all of our “down time” at the house either in the small screened-in porch area, or in the bedrooms (which are screened in as well). However, the kitchen is not screened in, so cooking dinner, fixing breakfast, or even making a sandwich led to many mosquito bites. As I said, all the bedrooms are screened in, and I only had 1 night where a mosquito buzzed my ear, but it did require constant vigilance to keep the bedroom doors closed ALL THE TIME. I thought this would cause the bedrooms to get hot at night, as it cut down on the ability to get sea-breezes, but in reality we didn’t have any problems with the rooms being too hot at night. (Also, all of the bedrooms have ceiling fans, and 2 of the bedrooms have oscillating fans to assist in moving the air at night.) So my advice: bring lots of bug repellent, keep the bedroom doors closed as often as possible, and if the bugs get bad, spend time in the screened in porch.
The 2nd small drawback was noise at night. During our stay there were several live bands at the bars and restaurants in Marigot Bay and their music easily drifted up to Pelican House. (Since the house is entirely open air, even the bedrooms, there was no way to keep the music out.) There was live music at several different venues on various nights during the week, and they seemed to mostly finish up by 11 pm, so if you’re not one to turn in until late, it probably won’t bother you. For “early to bed, early to rise” folks like myself, it was pretty annoying. The worst, though, was the first night (a Saturday night) where there seemed to be an outside dance party going on at a bar at the top of the hill overlooking the bay. That music/deejay was the loudest of the bunch, and went until past 1:30 am. That seemed to be the only night of the dance party, and the nights without any bands or music I slept fantastic. There are other night sounds to be aware of as well, but these I found extremely pleasant. The frogs/peepers/insects create a nighttime symphony every night that was surprisingly loud but also easy to sleep to. For me, it was like camping in a rainforest but with indoor plumbing. (Interestingly enough, in one of the cabinets at the house I found a bunch of earplugs, so obviously someone else felt that the nighttime noise was a bit loud as well.)
Lastly, the review below that mentions the skeleton key issue came up for us as well. Since the house is all open air, each bedroom and the kitchen is locked by a unique skeleton key. There is also a house key as well as a key for the safe the owners supply. This huge conflagration of keys was quite unwieldy, especially considering every time we left the house for a long period of time we had to lock all the rooms. The skeleton keys aren’t marked, so it always took a lot of time to go through each skeleton key, try it to see if it works; if not, go to the next, etc. Also, when going to the beach to sit or snorkel, and trying to have as few items with me as possible, having this huge pile of keys to lug with me everywhere seemed quite silly. I guess it’s the tradeoff to having the open-air floor plan, but the reply from the management below that they “fixed” the skeleton key problem is misleading.
Again, these “complaints” might not seem like much to others, but they did bother us on our trip. We had pretty bad weather the week we were in St. Lucia (only 1 ½ sunny days – even all the locals kept saying “This is usually our dry season, but it’s been raining non-stop for 2 weeks!”), which meant we spent more time than most might in the house, and maybe that’s why these issues popped up more for us. But we did have a lot of fun as well, especially going zip-lining in the rain forest, going up to Reduit Beach one day, snorkeling at a couple places on the island, and enjoying the Marigot Bay bars. Our favorites were Hurricane Hole and Chateau Mygo. We didn’t care for Doolittle’s, as it smelled bad and had tons of flies around every time we went, although it also had billiard tables, which aren’t a bad diversion when it rains.
One last note: If you get up to go to the kitchen in the middle of the night, you will most likely startle the cat that will be curled up on one of the chairs on the porch. Although if you’re not expecting it, it will probably scare you more than you will the cat.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
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