Staying with families is common, and usually a great deal, if that is what we were looking for; except that Margarita's House in Machu Picchu Pueblo was a hostel charging hostel prices for the "free experience" of crashing at a single mom's house with 3 kids running around.
Though we expect to be disappointed on occasion, we have had such great deals and experiences with the hostels in South America thus far, that we became somewhat spoiled, and that probably added to our further discontent.
We have stayed at hostels ranging from $16/double to $60/double, and there is no way that Margarita's House should be charging $35/double for the (lack of) service and amenities it came with. We would've accepted everything about the place had we paid about $15/double...maybe even $20/double MAX for being such a touristy town in a remote place. In fact, the most professionally and efficiently run hostel we've stayed at only charged $25/double for a large room, clean and modern private bath, down comforter, free breakfast, bar/restaurant service, lockers with electrical outlets, high security, free wifi, unlimited tea service, etc.
Margarita is the actual woman's name who owns this place, and she is certainly very nice, but way over her head in trying to run this place by herself and her 2 young daughters, with a toddler son running around. It was also difficult to communicate because none of them spoke a word of English in this very touristy town, but recognize that we are the delinquents not knowing Spanish very well.
Her daughters were sitting at the front desk when we came in, and after about 10 minutes trying to search for our reservation (where we became a little nervous), they finally got Margarita to come and she got us situated.
The room was basic and clean, except for the curtain that was too short for the large window that opens into the main hallway, resulting in a "free show" for anyone walking by who had a full view into our bathroom!
Occasionally, we would return from town and the front door would be locked with no one to let us in except for her son playing in the lobby area. He opened the door for us, which is rather scary as we could've been anyone.
On another occasion, we returned and they couldn't find our key. Turns out, it was left in the door after one of her daughters cleaned the room! OMG.
Every morning at 5 am, this place came alive with noises from the kitchen, her kids screaming, TV in the lobby turned on, washing machine started, etc. One morning, a call went directly to the answering machine at 5:30 am and the answering machine beeped every 10 seconds for 2 hours! Arrggh.
We felt bad returning super late on a Saturday night from a huge town celebration, as Margarita was up waiting for us to let us in the door and give us our key to our room.
They did have wifi in the common area, but one day, the modem needed to be reset and we couldn't find Margarita to notify her. When we did, she kept insisting on giving us the password. We finally got her to understand the it was not a password issue, that it was a technical issue.
There was a sign that breakfast (which was just bread and instant coffee) was served from 5 am to 8 am, presumably because most people get up early to go to Machu Picchu, but Margarita insisted in knowing exactly what time we wanted breakfast in the morning. We felt pressured to get up and meet the time that we promised, even though they could've easily just left the bread, hot water, and instant coffee out.
On the day of checkout (check out was 9 am), we ate breakfast and when we were going back to our room to pack-up around 8 am, the power went out in the entire town. So, we had to pack and get ready in the dark. At 9 am on-the-dot, we got a knock on the door. The daughter tells us we need to leave because it's 9 am, when it was obvious we were almost done packing. She was not happy that we asked for 5 more minutes. Give us a break! It's not like people are lining up trying to get checked-in to this room...
Since our train didn't leave until 3:20 pm, we just hung out in the lobby area for a while, journaling, reading, writing postcards, etc. This is when the daughter put me to work by asking me to alert her when a guest walked in because she was doing other things. Wha?! Sure enough, 3 backpackers walked in, so I fulfilled my assigned duty. And the whole nightmare appeared to repeat itself again...as the 3 stood around while they couldn't find their reservations for about 10 minutes, etc., etc.
All this was very strange to us because when we made the reservations a while back, a guy actually emailed us in English promptly, offering to pick us up at the train station, and how they had a second property in Cuzco. After our experience, it is unbelievable that they have a second property. They need professional help running this one place, let alone another. Clearly, this guy no longer works at Margarita's House, which is too bad.
We're not sure how this place received great reviews and ratings, but if this is the best rated place we could find in this price range, then god forbid what the other hostels are like in town.
