Mendoza: When do you outgrow hostels?

When traveling to Mendoza, our first instinct was to book a hostel because it’s what we know. The thought of paying more for a hotel didn’t even cross our minds, because college students are tough for money and you just book a hostel. You’re supposed to ignore the co-ed rooms, loud noise, pressure to socialize in multiple languages with everyone around you and dirty atmosphere.

Saturday after our winery tour, we stayed at Campo Base - a hostel in the same network of hostels on hostelworld.com that we used two years ago in Argentina. We had three girls in a six-man room, and many of the hostel residents spoke English. There were a lot of Australians and people from the UK visiting, and they were all heading out to bars. After a long night on a bus and long day at the wineries, all we wanted was a nap.

We arrived to our unmade bunk beds, and the hostel employees had to go grab sheets and blankets. No soap in the bathrooms, no towels and an overall moist feeling in the room. The other inhabitants were leaving the door open, the lights on and getting ready to go to the bars. Right as I fell asleep, the girl on the top bunk of my bunk bed tapped me to introduce herself. Why were we dealing with this?

Around 5 a.m., a stranger drunkenly stumbled into our room and thought Elizabeth was one of his friends. That was our point of no return. She complained downstairs, he wouldn’t own up to the situation and we could no longer tolerate the hostel. I looked up the prices for nearby hotels, which were $170/night -- not necessarily better than the $14/night we were paying at the hostel. Alicia, Elizabeth’s Canadian friend and co-intern, found a website called booking.com that books hotel rooms, similar to what Travelocity does for flights.

For just $15 more, she found a hotel a mile away that we booked for the next night. It might not have been in the “centro” / downtown area of town, but it was our own room. We’d have silence, our own beds, a locked room, a bathroom and a clean shower. It’s crazy to think that we would not have prioritized these in the first place. We arrived at the hotel and the staff was incredibly nice. Our room not only had clean beds and a bathroom, but we had our own kitchen! We enjoyed the rest of our Sunday with no crazy worries, and our stress levels diminished.  

The moral of the story: if you don’t want to be invaded by strangers, sleep in an unlocked room with loud music & lights on, and be bugged by international people all evening - you’re too old for a hostel. It’s time to take the financial risk and just book a hotel.