Villa Andante by the Sea or Hart Bay Area

[nancyr84]

Has anyone stayed at the Villa Andante by the sea ? cannot find any reviews although it seems to be booked far in advance. What is the Hart bay area like for swimming, snorkeling. Does the Villa have privacy ?
Nancy

[STJlvrnSTL]

We have stayed at Andante for our past 3 trips and are booked for our fourth trip this winter. We love this house. It isnt as up to date as some of the newer houses but they did add wifi this year. The Views are amazing you can look over one side and see Chocolate Hole and the other side is Hart Bay. We love that you can sit on any of the decks and listen to the ocean. It has both sunset and sunrise views which is a plus. The layout of the house has two of the bedrooms on opposite sides and the third bedroom downstairs which is nice if you have multiple couples. The third bedroom has its own covered deck with a hammock which is nice to lay in and listen to the water. The walk to the beach is rough because it is down the side of the cliff with limited coverage but if no one is at Oceanport you can use its 240 steps (yep I actually counted). We have found the water in Hart bay quite rough at least during the time we are there and hard to find the right place to enter away from the sea urchins.

Construction: A villa is being constructed below but the house has been in the process of being built over the last 3 times we have been there and it still looks pretty far from being done. I think there were stone layers there two days of our last trip. There are also some other villas being constructed but when we were there no work seemed to be getting done.

Privacy: Oceanport is on one side and iguana Inn is on the other. Iguana Inn is separated by a lot of foliage and Oceanport has an unobstructed view of the master bedroom deck. In the past three times we have been there Oceanport was only rented for part of our trip one time. You can check on destination St. John's Website to see if it will be rented while you are there.
If you have anymore questions feel free to PM me.

[DiverDrew]

STJlvrnSTL,

Thanks for the great info on Andante. We have booked there for next May and had been curious about the villa along these same lines.

Could you provide a little more detail about how the villa is not as up-to-date as some others you have seen? That would be very helpful in letting us know what to expect.

Thanks!

[RickG]

Hart Bay is an awesome dramatic snorkel. I check it out every visit in hopes that I will be able to get out there. But, the last time it was calm enough for me to snorkel was 1997!

Hart Bay is more easily accessed from Bovacoap Road. There is a trail that is much easier than 200+ steps - http://stjohnbeachguide.com/Beaches/hart.html . From there, a walk down Mampoo Road can get you to Devers Bay. It's a nice neighborhood.

Cheers, RickG

[Wolfhound]

We stayed at Andante in June. The description provided by STJlvrnSTL is accurate. The owners clearly care a lot about this villa and take nice care of it. We had a great time although we were usually out. The drive up Iguana Rd can be dicey. Hart is supposed to be a great snorkel but it was too rough the whole time we were there. Concur with RickG. Devers is a good place to go in that area. We stayed there two years ago and the snokeling was great.

[STJlvrnSTL]

Maybe up to date is the wrong choice of words. What I meant by up to date is like newer appliances and newer electronics as are in most of the newer villas. There are no TVs in the upstairs bedrooms and sometimes we had a problem with the satellite working. The speakers outside by the pool and in the house are awesome. The air conditioning unit in the downstairs bedroom is older and loud. The Owners take a lot of pride in this villa as wolfhound said. We love this villa and Viva has been nothing but nice to us. Also if you have people staying in the downstairs bedroom and they are light sleepers have them bring a sleep mask because the window coverings down there are pretty much non existent and as soon as the sun begins to rise the room is full of light.

Here are a few pictures:
Looking up at Andante from Hart Bay.

The View of Hart Bay from the deck

Iguana Rd up to Andante

The outside Dining Table

View from the top deck to the bottom deck

You can see the path to the beach in the bottom of this picture.

finally a picture up from the pool deck.


there are a couple more pictures along with some of my other STJ pictures at http://tonyf.smugmug.com