Hostel Refugio de Angeles - Guanajuato, Mexico

Comment by Jason, USA

February 2008

Functional but avoidable
The hostel I stayed this week was called "Refugio de Angeles," and it was on Cantarranas -- I'm positive because I took a photo of their sign as I walked out the door. However, the photos on this site do not look like the grimy, dim-lit, place I stayed in, nor do the listed amenities add up. Now, this hostel is actually just the second floor of a huge cafe-restaurant, and from what I saw, there isn't even an operating hostel office area. In all fairness, I got in late and had no reservations, so maybe others' experiences are different, but when I arrived at 8 p.m., a waiter/cook (who was about seventeen) just walked me up to the dorm/shared room and told me to pay when I saw him next. I never heard about a gym/fitness area or a game room. I just wanted a bed, though, so I was ok about that. What did bother me about this hostel were many little things that added up. The bathrooms were gross. The "men's" and "women's" toilets were just four toilet stalls in one bathroom, two that said "men" and two that said "women." One of the men's toilets didn't flush, and the other had no toilet paper, unless you count the mountain of used tp overflowing from the adjacent trashcan. There were two computers, but the internet was not working the night I stayed, and I couldn't really ask the waiter/cook to look at it, because he was downstairs being -- you know -- a waiter/cook for the restaurant. And (this really bothered me) you don't get a key at this hostel. The doors to the restaurant stay wide open all night to let hostel guests (and whoever else) in, and although I'm sure they lock their restaurant valuables up, there's no way to keep random people from the street from wandering into the dorm upstairs, for example. To demonstrate this, I had no trouble just meandering upstairs the next day, for instance, when different restaurant employees who hadn't yet met me were working. Additionally, the "lockers" in the shared room are large rickety crates held shut by one metal hinge that could easily be taken off in thirty seconds if you had a screwdriver. So I was worried about my safety at night, and that of my stuff during the day. Location was good (almost all the hostels are good location though -- the city is small). And there seemed to be hot water. And they are beds in a warm room, so if that's all you want, you got it. I asked a fellow roommate how he liked the place (it was his second night); his exact words were, "it's not bad?" Side note -- the private rooms did seem nice (the one I snuck into had a private bath), and maybe private rooms are lockable -- however, they were also $35 USD. I would not stay here again. It did not seem like a hostel -- it was definitely just a poorly-lit, spacious cafe that happened to have beds and a bathroom area upstairs.