The view from our 12th floor condo at Bahia Del Sol was very nice as long as you looked out to the Caribbean Sea. Down below on the street there were commercial buildings, small homes, low-rise apartment structures and a few vacant lots with trash piles on them. Off to the left (South East), we could see the Hilton Resort & Yacht Harbor and other luxury hotels or condominium towers.

We were anxious to visit one of Margarita's dozen or so beaches but instead we spent our first day getting our things organized, killing roaches and cleaning. I guess our condo had been vacant for awhile before our visit so there were a few roaches in the kitchen, bathroom and living room. A few cans of Raid roach spray and a day of airing out the condo solved our pest control problem for the rest of the month. Don't let that scare you off. Tropical places will invariably always have insects.

The bathroom had a small hot water heater with a timer switch that had to be turned on at least 15 minutes before a shower.

The kitchen was equipped with all the usual appliances including an oven, range, microwave, and toaster. Our landlord warned us that the water out of the tap was not suitable for drinking or cooking. We'd buy large jugs of water from the convenience store downstairs or the Panaderia Bolivar across the street.

The Bella Vista beach is a few blocks from the Bahia Del Sol building, but it is definitely not one of the nicer beaches on the island. We had read that Playa El Aqua was the most popular, so we flagged down a taxi in front of the building and had the driver take us there. I arranged for the taxi driver to pick us up a few hours later. We enjoyed the driver's prompt service and friendly personality, so I took his business card. For the rest of the month, I used our Skype VOIP internet phone to call Luis for any trips we wanted to take including a complete Island Tour.

All of the water and electricity for Isla Margarita is piped and wired in from the mainland of Venezuela. The landlord explained that we needed to turn on the water pump in our closet during specified times of the morning and afternoon to fill up the condo's water tanks. At least once or twice during the month, we forgot to turn on the pump and had to ration our water until the next morning or afternoon.

During our month at the Bahia Del Sol condominium tower, we hardly ever saw the other residents in the building. I'm assuming that many of the units in the building are also vacation rentals or vacation homes for wealthy Venezuelan families.

To watch a video clip of the view from the 12th floor of the Bahia Del Sol building, click on the link below. The movie is encoded in the Windows Media (WMV) format, runs about 30 seconds long and has a file size of 10 MB.

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