Hostal Torre de Babel — Hotel in Castro

Looking thru these posts, Ii see that others have had the same experience. Here's what happened to us:||We booked 2 nights thru hostelbookers.com and when we showed up, our host did not have any reservation for us. We showed him a printout of our confirmation, but, "sorry". The confirmation showed that we paid $13 for the booking. He did have a room available for our first night, but not the second. The room was very small, with no window - not too appealing. We took it anyway because since there was a big festival in town, and it was a weekend, and late in the day, we thought we would have a hard time finding something else. We looked on several websites and everything seemed to be booked up. We were not too happy thinking that we would have to spend time the next day looking for another place to stay. It turned out that the next day our host told us that another guest had decided to leave a day early, so we could have that room. We moved our stuff out of the dark cupboard and into a nice room on the 1st floor. We were not too impressed with that whole situation, and knowing that it happened to someone else, well, there's no excuse. The host would not reimburse us for the $13 we paid. Said he never received it. Well, someone got it, and we felt ripped off. ||||Aside from that, the place is clean, in a good location, has decent Wi-Fi, and a nice, well equipped kitchen for guest use. Breakfast was better than average. The host recommended the festival (Costumbrista) which we really enjoyed, and was very knowledgeable about the area. The only downside was the shared bath was shared by 4 rooms - seemed like we were always...

Well, it already started badly when we arrived. The owner was out (having dinner) and his mother, who was present in the house, didn't know about us coming that night, although I had booked the room months before. There were two rooms left, both badly isolated, very cramped and one without a window. I'm not claustrophobic, but I couldn't wait to get out of it the next morning... It just seemed like they had completely forgotten about us and then gave us the worst room of the house. ||We had a hard time parking the car as well, since there is barely any parking space. ||On the upside, the owner did his best to help us out, inventively parking the car on the few cm left, giving us advice about town and serving us a tasty breakfast, complete with Columbian coffee. ||I can see why people like this place and I guess in other circumstances I would've been far more positive about it, but the room just didn't meet...

We spent two nights in this hotel and found the owner just fantastic! He was really kind, friendly and always happy to help and provide us with what we needed. He also speaks a really good English which was very convenient as our Spanish skills are catastrophic. ||The hotel is located close to the city center (Castro is not such a big|City anyway). the sea side and the colorful houses. The place is well heated and the breakfirst really generous; bread, yogurt, eggs, cheese,...||The bathroom located on the second floor was one of the best we had during our trip with a big tub and 2 sinks.||One thing that could be improved but is pretty common in chile is the phonic isolation of the room.||If we had to come back to Castro we will definitely come...