The location of Tamarind Hills Resort is what makes it. Being located on Ffryes Beach, easily one of the Top 10 of the 365 beaches on Antigua, is the best benefit of Tamarind. The beach and water are just stunning and never crowded while we were there. Our villa was high on the hill, which made for just spectacular views of the sunset as the weather allowed.
The staff is all friendly, engaging, and well-educated. Not all, especially the restaurant/bar service, was efficient, but I will get to that.
Our unit, K39, was nice and spacious, although the kitchenette portion felt very dated. It was high on the hill, which made for some challenging walks up and down to the beach or restaurant, but it worked for us. The resort will give you a ride any time you want it, but not always immediately, depending on staff availability.
The restaurant on site, Wild Tamarind, was hit and miss. Some of the food was very good, other, like pizza night, not so good (my pizza was cold, and the wife's gluten-free pizza was pretty pathetic looking and tasting). The restaurant is on the pricey side, so we expected better. The breakfast terrace was nice. Bar service on the beach was handy if slow. Each time we went to sign our bill before leaving the beach, it was as if they were doing it for the first time, and you ended up standing there waiting for 5 or 10 minutes while they tried to figure out how to present your bill.
There are some excellent restaurants nearby, but they do require a car. We ate at Sheer Rocks one night and The Fox House on another night; they were both excellent, especially The Fox House.
Our stay did end on a sour note as we returned from the beach on our last day to shower for dinner, only to find we had no running water. It took about 3 hours to fix; we missed our dinner reservation and the music, only to eat much later than we liked. Things happen that we get; how a resort handles these mishaps is the true measure. We've been lucky to stay at places that very proactively address issues that occur, and unfortunately, have stayed at places that either consciously or unconsciously ignore the issue, hoping we didn't notice or weren't bothered. Well, Tamarind was the latter; other than the maintenance worker, no one from the resort contacted us or apologized about it either before, after, or during the situation. When I called the front desk to ask them to help move our dinner reservation, and asked her if they would be buying us dinner for the inconvenience, she literally laughed at me. The great inconvenience to us was not addressed until we were checking out, and the manager on duty happened to ask how our stay was (they knew what room we were in, so they knew what happened, but again did nothing proactive to compensate us or even just apologize to us). After hearing our story, they did comp us a little on our total bill, but had we not brought it up, they would have said and done nothing. It was an unfortunate way for our 1-week visit to end.
Overall, we enjoyed our stay because of the beach and views far outweighing some of the challenges. The beach and views make this resort worthwhile.
