Misti hostel B&B. — Hotel in Arequipa

We stayed here due to the great location (5 minutes walk to Plaza de Armas and all the museums) and the good reviews on Booking.com. We arrived at 5am (bus with Peruhop) and unfortunately the rooms were not ready. He did say they would probably be ready by 9am, which was still an early check-in. However, he then preceded to do one better by allowing us to sleep in a shared bedroom for four hours. This was beyond amazing.||The room we stayed in had three single beds (I’m fairly sure we booked a twin - two doubles), but it was big with a balcony and clean (although the bathroom was little awkwardly laid out/small as you had to almost step over the toilet to get into the shower). There was hot water (it took a while, but was available) and pressure was ok. WiFi worked well and they had multiple network modems to ensure a strong signal reached everywhere. From the balcony you could see the mountain. Obviously being street facing meant the noise was there between 6am and 11pm, but that’s why I pack earplugs!||They ordered to clean the room, but we preferred our rooms being untouched for two night stays - so it was good to have the option!||They also clean your clothes at 6 soles per kilo - a few bags of our clothes washed cost 33 soles.||Beyond that, the location is great - so close to everything!!||Breakfast is advertised as only 8am to 9:30am but as we checked out at 7:15am we saw lots eating. If we had known we would have asked for breakfast the second day (so remember to ask if you’re doing an early morning tour). Breakfast was two eggs, done the way you want them, bread, juice and instant coffee (don’t mind instant - but this brand was bad). It was decent but didn’t quite match up to many of the other hostel breakfasts we had received.||The only thing that was slightly off was that no-one was going to charge us for the room! We had to tell them we hadn’t paid, and then it got very awkward. They first tried to charge us 212.50 soles (I think they thought we hadn’t paid for the washing when we had) and then it still was more than quoted on Booking.com. They didn’t take USD despite the room rate being in USD and wouldn’t process that on the credit card. They also charged a 10% fee for credit card (not mentioned on Booking.com either!!). Ultimately, we paid in cash - 163 soles, still more than the exchange rate but pretty close (159 soles). Normally this stuff would annoy me, but I quickly remembered how they went out of their way to sort out an early check-in and let us sleep and it was...

They claim there’s patio at the hostel room. There is no patio and there has never been any. There’s no toilet paper during the day. Breakfast is really simple. There’s even no coffee or a butter. You have to ask for a butter. You basically get dry bread and omelette. Forget about hot water. Two showers have no hot water. The third one has a hot water but you can’t regulate it so its boiling hot. Its incredibly noisy. There’s bar just under it. You won’t have a chance to sleep till late night. The first night when I arrived there was a reconstruction. They used circular saw and jackhammer till 1 am. I couldn’t sleep and the receptionist wasn’t even bothered when I asked him when it will stop. There’s never anyone at the reception. The second day of my stay there was no water. It was planned in advance for streets around. The point is that the hostel didn’t take any measures and didn’t prepare buckets with water to have an option to flush. There are only two toilets for the whole accommodation. Everybody was using them without possibility to flush them the whole day. Can you imagine how disgusting it was?!?!?!? You hear everything in the rooms. Especially the ringing doorbell. Tonight someone was ringing the doorbell for more than 10 minutes. But the receptionist wasn’t even bothered and was sleeping. So I had to get out od the bed to wake him up so he lets the person in a the ringing stop. I basically didn’t sleep for two nights. I moved to different...

One of the evenings (around 22:30-23:00) there was no hot water, as I think the hostel turns off the heating facility during the night.| You have to walk up few narrow steps in order to reach the hostel, as it's on the first floor.| One of our towels had a tiny stain on it.|The staff are great, they did everything to make us feel comfortable, big thank you!| Location was really good, with only 3 minutes' walk to the main square in Arequipa, shops around, a nice restaurant and cafe on the ground floor.| Our room was with private bathroom, double bed of good size and an electric heater inside the room; all areas were really clean. | There are few (3 if I'm correct) Wi-Fi networks to make sure entire property is covered. They were fast and we even streamed Netflix with no problems. | Laundry service is offered at 6 Soles per KG. We gave it to them in the morning and it was ready in the evening the same day.| More about Arequipa, Peru and South America travel on our...