Long story short: DO NOT stay without a car and a solid command of Portuguese. Expect some…read morechallenges.
First, the good. The grounds themselves are lovely, with lots of trees, seating areas scattered around the lawns, and docks on the river for sunbathing. We spent our sunny days kayaking and swimming in the small river inlet. The daily breakfast was very convenient, though it was mostly processed dairy and bread with instant coffee and not much fruit. Our two villas were cleaned daily by friendly staff.
These villas are not designed to be convenient for international travelers. There is one taxi in the whole village, and the driver only speaks Portuguese, so we had to wait for a call back from a villa manager so that she could call the taxi driver to see if he was available. We had a very difficult time finding transportation from the train station to the villas upon arrival, and the walk would have been over an hour. At one point the usual driver was unavailable and we had another driver who drove so erratically up the dirt hill that the pregnant member of our party was fearful for her safety.
There is no nearby restaurant or grocery store accessible without a taxi ride, so we arranged for a drive to the store on our second day. There is one restaurant that delivers (after a call to the villa manager once again), but they have a very limited take out menu that doesn't include vegetarian options.
We were told many times that tours or activities could be arranged, but because we were more that 4 people, no options seemed to be available to us.
All transactions (including food delivery and tours) apparently need to be conducted in cash. I didn't realize that we had even booked our room using a money order instead of a credit card, which I would have refused had I booked it myself.
Lastly, our reservation was changed without our consent. We were shown to our rooms by a housekeeper who only spoke Portuguese and realized that we were shown one small villa instead of the larger one we'd reserved. We called the manager, who told us there was an issue with that villa, and promised to modify the price when we checked out. We later saw people checking out of our reserved villa, which they had apparently overbooked despite there being fat too few options for any confusion to have occurred.
We had a nice enough time cooking our own meals and lounging by the river, but we didn't get to eat out, take a boat tour, or see a winery like we'd planned. I wouldn't count on the staff to hold our reservations or help us get to the train on time in the future, so I won't be returning.
