Hotel Reviews of Estuary Island

6.11
Prithviraj, Bangalore | 17^th February 2006
Hotel Review of Estuary Island
Comments: One needs to use boat to reach the resort. There is no road available. Resort arranges free pickup and drop. A world away from all of hectic life. Staff were very friendly. I wonder how they managed to train all of them to that standard. Simply Great! Resort and the beach is separated by a river which takes a minute to cross by resort's speed boat (free transfers any time till 6pm). Lifeguard would be available in the beach whenever guest visits beach.
Dinner is of buffet type and you get a lot of variety of food. Cost 300 per head inc tax. I had booked my hotel via makemytrip.com where the price (inc tax) was lesser than what the hotel quoted(ex tax).
I had stayed in Estuary View type of room which as a sea/river facing balcony. However you can just see the pool in front of the hotel, not the sea/river because there are lots of coconut trees in front of hotel (garden). This type of room is a mid ranged as far as price is concerned. In the lower range, you get Garden View
which is in the rear side of the property. Of course not much time we spent inside!! Stay of 2N/3D is good time.
There were many outdoor activities like beach volleyball, fishing, boating etc etc... However boating is not self driven. 2 kinds of boats are available - Speed Boat and Row Boat. You can enjoy an hour drive on this putting a circle to the island (on which resort is located) for Rs.350 or Rs.250 respectively. Boat drive on speedboat for an hour was very nice. They took us into narrow backwaters.
Avoid during rainy seasons as it would be continuously raining it seems.

My itinerary was as below
5.00pm Leave to Tiruvanatapuram / Trivendrum from Bangalore by Volvo bus (Rs. 612 per head)
8:00 am Next day reach trivendrum. Checked in to a small hotel (Hotel Manjalikulam on Manjalikulam Road) which is walk able from bus stand (0.8km). They charge Rs.400 for double room - non-ac. Ground floor rooms were clean
10:00am Started with local sight seeing using three wheeler (auto rickshaw)
01:00 pm Started to Poovar by taxi (Rs 400). There are good number of sign boards showing way to Estuary Island when you near Poovar.
2:00pm Reached Poovar Jetty. Guard there sent a message via wireless for a boat. Boat arrived within 10 minutes. Drive on boat takes 10-15 minutes to reach resort.

Return Journey:
12:30p Started by boat to Jetty and Hotel had arranged for taxi to trivendrum. Decided to go via Kovalam (which is on the way). Visited Kovalam Beach (30mins). Visited Kovalam Aquarium which dint look good from out side, but was really good when we went in.
4:00pm reached Trivendrum and boarded bus to Bangalore (Volvo -AC).
7:00 am next day in Bangalore.

Probably some time later I will come up with more detailed write up. Just wanted to post this so that it would be helpful to others. On the return journey, it would be advisable to book taxi from keralataxi.com I guess because their price was pretty low. Hotel charged 750 for non-ac vehicle. May be a bit more you could get ac vehicle for 8hr / 80 km basis for a day!
Best Experience: Great Hospitality.
Good Food (I've tried only Veg)
Good Place
Worst Experience: I dint like ayurvedic massages. Mainly because it was oil based. I am not comparing it with anything I had earlier as this was the first of this kind.