HI - Guanajuato - Hostalito de Guanajuato Hostel

Hostalito Guanajuato is wonderfully located, right in the center, walking distance from everything, and the half-hour cab ride from the airport to the hostel entails a quick tour of colorful, bustling Guanajuato -- a magnificent old colonial silver city full of pedestrian walkways, art, university students, language schools, and more color than anybody's eyes can hold. We think that although there is much to be said for Mexico City, hassling with that massive, complex, and busy airport is not easy -- a far more pleasurable way to enter Mexico is to fly directly to the Guanajuato/Leon International Airport, just a two-hour hop from Houston.

The hostel is just a few steps uphill from VIP's, an upscale Mexican chain restaurant, so if the cab driver doesn't recognize the address, tell him you want to go to VIP's. As you enter the hostel, the friendly front desk and sitting room is at the end of the corridor, and the bar/smoking room is a loft area above and on the left. Beyond the front desk is a computer room (free internet on two computers) and a well-furnished kitchen, and all the guest rooms are upstairs on three or four floors (depending on how you count them).

Under normal circumstances (when no large groups are registered), it's a convivial place full of good-natured backpackers who are savvy hostelers from all over the planet. We met people from Switzerland, Canada, Holland, Australia, Germany, and the U.S. while we were there. It's clean enough (though they struggle with sewer gas coming up into the bathroom), the beds are ok (some better than others), the decorative touches are delightful, and the staff is terrific. Breakfast is coffee and prepackaged dry toast (like cardboard) with jam available, though the doughty traveler will bring something to store in the fridge as a supplement to the spartan breakfast.

On the last night of our stay, twenty-two high school kids arrived, complete with karaoke system, clouds of perfume, and enough clacking shoes to wake the mummies the city is so famous for. So infested, the hostel, which is fitted to accommodate up to twenty, was literally bursting with thirty guests (we counted them) and some creative bed-sharing arrangements. There is only one common shower room (two showers, one of which only works sporadically if the other is not in use) and toilet. One of the private rooms has its own bathroom and toilet, and there are two other toilet-and-sink affairs, but packing thirty people into a space built for twenty is a really bad idea. We also observed that two guests who had registered and paid their deposits were "bumped" by this infestation, which led to considerable distress for them, and although the staff was able to find them rooms elsewhere, they experienced anxious moments of waiting to find out if they had a bed to sleep in, and one burst into tears.

That said, we loved Guanajuato so much that even that last-night experience didn't dampen our good spirits. The city, home town to Vicente Fox, is prosperous, booming, and full of life, energy, and skilled artisans repainting, refurbishing, rewiring, and replenishing its colonial buildings. There's good live music just about everywhere, roving groups of buskers, exciting cutting-edge art exhibits, and simply amazing street life. And did we mention the color? There's amazing color. If you can manage to stay at the hostel when it isn't crammed full of teenagers, you can have a wonderful stay.