The Secret Garden Quito — Restaurant in Centro Histórico

I don’t know how this hostel has all these positive reviews. Below are the positive and negative aspects:

The location of the reception is very inconveniently located. Immediately when you enter the hostel, where you assume the reception would be, is instead a tourism office where they try to get you to book tours. The actual reception IS LOCATED ON THE TOP FLOOR OF THE HOSTEL. My only logic of why they would do this is to try to get you to spend your money and sign up for tour packages. Myself and numerous other travelers were very confused about this. The dorms: the dorm I stayed in had a repulsive stench of body oder, mold, and smelly feet. There was no circulation in the room and it was unbearable trying to sleep in there. To make matters worse, the lockers were tiny, and the part of the locker where you’re supposed to attach your pad lock was designed in such a way that my padlock would not fit. Which is a huge issue (see below for more on this). Because the locker situation was so bad, the room was extremely unorganized and other travelers had their massive bags and belongings strewn across the floor. Every time I tried to get to my bed I had to step over backpacks and loose belongings strewn across the floor. The entire hostel, especially the dorms, is complete dirty and unsanitary and badly needs a deep deep cleaning. If the weather is bad, prepare to be wet. The design of the hostel is mostly open air. There are major portions of the hostel with no roof. If the weather is rainy you’ll get wet walking around portions of the hostel (besides the dorms and certain other areas). On one of the floors is a co-working space that is weather proofed extremely poorly. While I was working on my laptop rain would seep in and get my laptop wet. So I found the dining area and tried to work there, but at that time the employees were having some kind of group dinner or something and taking up most of the space. Shouldn’t the employees have their own separate dining area? THEFT!!! This hostel has a massive problem with theft. I read an earlier review from someone stating they’d been robbed from the hostel. Well, I was no exception. My $1,800 digital camera mysteriously “vanished” from my bag while I had it in the storage room. The storage room requires you to ring a bell which notifies an employee to remotely unlock the door. This system seems secure, but once inside the storage room, there are no cameras. This is absolutely a massive security flaw as anyone is free to steal anything once inside. Once I realized I had been robbed I was already in another city. I contacted the hostel and they said since there are no cameras in the storage room, there was nothing they could do about it. And another traveler staying at the hostel around the same time as myself had her bag with her passport inside stolen from the hostel bar! I have no way to confirm it, but I suspect the degenerate employees to be the ones stealing from guests. This is unacceptable and this hostel needs to do a better job screening these criminals they hire. In conclusion, if you like staying in an unsafe hostel where you’ll likely get robbed, smells terrible, has an inconveniently located reception, and is rainy and wet, this is the perfect...

I would have liked to give 5 stars because I really like some of the people who work there. So, I'll start by mentioning the positive aspects. You'll find my criticism in the last section(s).

Veronica and Eli, who do the laundry and clean the rooms, are really lovely people and provide great service. While I had a fever for several days, Veronica often asked how I was feeling and gave me tips on how to recover. I am also very grateful to Maria Belen. I had such a high fever that I couldn't make it to the roof terrace in time to order food. Since I was 20 minutes late, no one wanted to make me anything to eat. I had severe chills and dizziness and needed to eat something. Only Maria was kind enough to offer me two bananas after she tried several times to persuade the kitchen to cook me a meal. Even though it was only two bananas, they saved my evening. Such an attentive and loving gesture. Finally, I would also like to mention Alexi, who cooked delicious vegetarian meals for me.

Well, the hostel itself is a classic tourist hostel with a lot of consumerism. The rooms themselves were quiet, even though there was a party going on upstairs. The hostel is green and clean, but it lacks spirit. The people who work there give the building some spirit. But for me, it remains a consumerist hostel.

Finally, I would like to mention that when I checked out, I found that the bill was a little higher than expected. I asked if I could take a look at it. The woman at the reception desk was obviously annoyed that I wanted to see it. I found two drinks that weren't mine. I didn't buy any drinks at the hostel. The drinks were removed, but I wanted to go through everything again. The woman, still very annoyed, quickly rattled off the bill. Okay, I paid and left the hostel, feeling pressured by the receptionist. Afterwards, I requested a bill by email. There, I saw that after the first night, the price per night had been increased by $1.20. I wasn't told about this increase, and it doesn't make sense to me, as I stayed in the same room and the same bed throughout my stay. So I asked via WhatsApp and later also by email where this price increase came from. Suddenly, no one responded to me anymore. I asked four times and still have not received any feedback. I don't know what they are hiding, but I find it totally unprofessional to be so opaque and raise prices without notice. To me, this simply speaks to the soulless character of this hostel, which seems to be solely profit-oriented.

Sadly, the response from the management of the hostel underneath my comment showed that they can't handle critique and even after replying, they still didn't give me an explanation why the price was higher. But after asking again via WhatsApp, staff from the hostel told me that the price fluctuates. I think it would just be good to get...

The laundry service provided by Rosita and Mary was excellent, especially after a dirty Cotopaxi hike! Our clothes came back very clean! $1.50/kg +15% which i guess is for service? Would probably prefer a set rate rather than the additional 15%.

Hotel itself is well located with a great rooftop bar. The surrounding restaurants look nice, we went to the sushi place which is highly recommend. We stayed in a private room on the ground floor. This was comfortable and they provide lots of bedding for cold nights. However, please can you do something about noise in early hours of the morning. We stayed for 4 nights so far (one night more) and the noise at 6am outside our room has been so loud with cleaning happening in the bathrooms next door or drilling this morning above our room! This made our nights here less enjoyable because being woken up at that time when you don’t need to isn’t ideal. Noise from the rooftop is absolutely fine on ground floor, bar closes at 11pm and there are separate staircases so we don’t have loads of people coming past our room!

Showers are hot and bathrooms are very clean to be fair!

The tours are brilliant- highly recommend the walking tour it was honestly the best tour we have done in 8 months of travel. It was about 4 hours and we stopped for empanadas and chocolate tastings. Crazy how it is free!! We also did the Cotopaxi hike, our guide Darwin was amazing and we had the best day with him. He was very kind and let me use his sunglasses as I had forgotten mine - he was worried I’d hurt my eyes from the snow reflection! I can’t remember the guys name on reception/ tour bookings but he’s Venezuelan and literally was amazing. He made our booking tour/ checking in process very very easy and was helping us practice our Spanish.

The food in the hostel is nice but sometimes hit and miss. The food can either come out really hot or luke warm. Please don’t add sugar to coffees in the morning as standard! The breakfast avo toast is good. 50% off is good but as other comments have stated, the prices are crazily over inflated so the 50% brings it back to normal.

Happy hour is good but the system doesn’t seem to work that well. drinks can get missed or you wait so long for cocktails you end up chasing them. You need more staff on the bar between 6-7 or a better system online perhaps.

Nice stay and...