Beyond Seas Studio

The view from the window of this place is spectacular….and that is all. We booked this studio in December of 2021 with our arrival date being today, May 15 2022. There had been some communication with the host in the past weeks/days reminding us we needed to pay the remainder of what was due and kept trying to get us to bring cash. We asked for a credit card invoice which we didn’t get until a few days ago, and we then paid. When we arrived, it was not well marked, and there was nothing in the emails indicating what we should look for. So we had to drive up and down the street for about ten minutes and called the number we were given. Barbara ended up meeting us to park and showed us how to get up to the flat. She was friendly and when we got up to the door, she explained how to open it and when she did immediately started to apologise for the smell and trying to open the window gate saying “the place has been closed for one week, the smell should be gone soon” while also turning on power to the fridge and closing the doors to it. The smell was that of raw sewage. There is no other way to describe it. We ran the sinks and shower, flushed the toilet, and then decided to go down to the beach to give it some time to dissipate. The location relative to the beach was great, really. The water and sand were lovely as well. But unfortunately it started to rain as soon as we got down to the water and we begrudgingly went back up to the room to sit at the table by the window. The smell continued to permeate and now was so strong that even leaving the door open and sitting in front of the window, we couldn’t escape it. It made my boyfriend and I both gag and we decided after a couple of hours that we couldn’t stand it and decided to find somewhere else to stay. We decided to go outside to contact the hosts who suddenly were nowhere to be found. We called several numbers provided to us and got no response. There was little cell service and no Wi-Fi outside so my boyfriend unfortunately had to go back upstairs to try and contact someone. After about 45 minutes and several channels later, Barbara finally responded on WhatsApp after we told her that since we couldn’t get a hold of anyone, please tell us where to leave the keys. She told us to leave the keys in the mailbox of one of the other apartments in the building. Then 20 minutes later she offered us a different apartment. By this point it had already been 2 hours of trying to sort this problem and we both felt extremely ill from the smell so we dropped the keys and left. We explained that we did not want to stay in a different room in the building (the beyond seas studio website advertises 2 different studios and now suddenly there is a whole building?) FIVE HOURS LATER someone else responds to one of our WhatsApp messages and says there’s another apartment available. By this point it’s dark and I told them that we had already left and paid $1200 to book new accommodations. He responded by saying th