Hostal Puritama — Hotel in San Pedro de Atacama

We are extremely unhappy with the service provided by Puritama. We booked 2 double rooms for 4 people. In one of them, there was a whole in the bathroom “window”, so the bathroom was always cold.

There were no heaters in the rooms and the hostel did not provide heaters after being asked for one. The owner of the hostel told us “well, it’s cold here.”

They do not accept payments through card. Even if in Booking they say they do. We asked 3 times for an invoice. They promised they would send one but they never did.

Two of the people that were part of our reservation “upgraded” to a better room so that the room would be warmer. It wasn’t. There was an extremely weak heater, so the room was still cold.

When these 2 people upgraded to a better room, they were showed different rooms to choose. Most of the rooms in the hostel were empty. A lot of them had a heater inside that was not in use. Besides that, we were not provided with a heater.

Most of the electric plugs didn’t work.

We were promised a breakfast. Due to an early tour they said they would prepare it to take with us. They gave us 4 yoghurts (no spoons) and 4 cereal bars. The 2nd day, they gave us 2 cereal bars – we were 4 people. The 3rd day they said that they don’t do early breakfasts.

The day we arrived there there was no hot water. We showered with cold water with freezing temperatures outside.

We complained to several staff members: first to the volunteer, then to the administrator and finally to the owner. The owner was very passive-aggresive and claimed we didn’t inform anyone, which wasn’t true. She also talked non-stop for several minutes about the way they handle things internally and that because “she wasn’t there” she could not fix things soon enough. She kept interrupting us while speaking. It was a very unpleasant experience.

She called the administrator in front of us to ask her if we had complained before –we did– and the administrator said no.

The worst experience in any...

Way overpriced for what it is. The room I had was large, but you couldn’t open closet because it is blocked by a mini fridge. Great shower, but there is nowhere to put toiletries and there were no towels, no soap, and no hot water when I arrived. When I told lady at the reception there is no hot water, her response was it’s impossible. Finally the next day another worker from a reception turn something on and here it was - hot water. On the last day of my stay it disappeared again, but I couldn’t face another conversation about it. |My biggest problem however was with that lady who works the reception. Even with my limited Spanish I could understand that she is at minimum unfriendly and at its worst rude. Plus she tried to charge me 100$US more than what it was booked for on Expedia. If I didn’t check the conversion rate, she would’ve got away with it too. Place doesn’t take credit cards and almost no one speaks English. Normally I wouldn’t even mention it, but for what they charge, they should at least make an effort. |There are plenty other places to stay in San Pedro. So choose somewhere else. If I did it again and was staying more than couple nights, I would book for 2 nights and shop around while in town for the rest of the stay, that is if I didn’t like...

Stayed here for 2 nights as part of a G adventures tour in June 2019. The room I was in had nothing wrong with appearance or the bed, but was right next to the road, with the road height being higher than the floor of the room.||||The wifi rarely worked outside of the courtyard area, which was exposed to the weather, and sometimes didn't work in that area.||||The night staff were the biggest issue with my stay here (the day and cleaning staff were good though). On the first night at around 8pm, despite the group being told that we could quietly drink in the courtyard area until 10pm, the staff member started yelling at the group for doing so.||||The laundry: On the first night when I provided 2kg of clothes to the hotel to be laundered, I was advised that the cost was 2000CLP/kg ($4AUD/kg). When I first saw my clothes in the reception area the next day, there was a sticker with a cost of 6000CLP (3000CLP/kg). In the 30 minutes between first seeing the bag and collecting it, the sticker was removed and a price of 8020CLP (twice the advertised price) was written on the bag, I suspect by the hotel staff member.||||If you get laundry done here, make sure you have your own scales, otherwise there's a risk you will be seriously...