Kia Ora Lodge

The dirt road to this property is very rough and difficult. We arrived here shortly after 6 PM and there was no check in desk and no staff on the property. New guests like us wandered around this crowded building that includes rooms and a hostel. Eventually a teenager showed up and we picked a room to stay in. Unfortunately there was no hot water for showers. We made phone calls to management that were difficult due to foreign language difficulties. The teenager came back with another relative and said they were looking for the backup hot water system electrical breaker in order to help us have hot water. Later they came back and told us they couldn’t find a backup system. We went to bed. The next morning the owner Franco finally showed up and advised us that he only has the solar hot water system with no backup way to heat hot water. He explained that if a customer runs a bath then the hot water system capacity is run out and won’t recover until the next sunny day. This was unacceptable to us. He was adamant that we shouldn’t expect hot water “unless listed as one of our features”. We feel like that is pretty ridiculous and a hot water is a normal “feature” expectation like towels, toilet paper and pillows. We left and booked at another local property with plenty of hot water and that also had backup hot water heating systems. Our belief is that he has too many guests and hostel occupants that overtax the small amount of hot water his system can produce. We will not return!