Travel for Love

I’ve always wanted to check out Buenos Aires, and we found some decent flights on Gol so we booked a flight to spend a week there. We purposely only booked a place to stay for the first night only and traveled with backpacks to have the flexibility to travel to another part of Argentina as well. I’ll go more into that in another post. In this post I will focus on the places we stayed, cause we had some fairly unique lodging experiences. In later posts I’ll get into more about what we did and saw in BsAs.

So we looked around for lodging in BsAs and decided a hostel (with a private room) was the best option for us. There are tons of different hostels in Buenos Aires, many more than good, reasonably priced hotels. I found PAX hostel online and made a reservation which ended up being around $50 US for the night. Despite the great exchange rate with the dollar (almost 4 to 1), lodging in BsAs just wasn’t cheap.

Our flight arrived at around 9:30 at night, so we took a taxi for the 30-40 minute ride to downtown. We went through some really scummy looking areas on the outskirts of town and, while it looked a little nicer as we got further into town, we did not think the area around the hostel was that nice. Definitely not an area I would feel very comfortable walking around at night. For what it’s worth the hostel was advertised to be in the San Telmo area but it was definitely on the crummy edge of that neighborhood.

This was our first time staying in a hostel and we weren’t sure what to expect. We were greeted at the door by a cheerful English girl who ushered us around and made A LOT of small talk. It was a little much after a long night of travel but she was definitely very helpful. She showed us around and showed us to our room, which was a little disappointing. It was very very small, the bed was super hard, the pillows were just foam rubber, and it could have been quite a bit cleaner. We were also situated right in the lobby where everyone came and went, and our window was facing the noisy street below.

The hostel had a bar downstairs, which was nice. We went down to have a beer and order some takeout (Chinese food!!! After 2 weeks in Brazil I was sooooo excited for Chinese!). The place was pretty busy, with a table of rowdy Spaniards, 3 punky Brits who were intrigued by the prospect of trannys in the shady neighborhood close by, and a few other random people. It was definitely the stereotypical young backpacker crowd, and the hostel was set up for meeting people and participating in tons of activities. The hostel also had free wi-fi everywhere which was great.

The next day we had our included breakfast with two nice French girls who were starting a round the world trip in BsAs. The poor girls had spent the night at PAX after they showed up at a different hostel they had booked only to find no record of their reservation. The staff at the hostel was very very helpful. They sat us down with a map of the city and showed us all sorts of nice landmarks and restaurants. They also showed us areas to avoid at night, which included the area our cab had taken us through on the way to the hostel. They recommended we just turn left when exiting and avoid the area off to the right. The area to the left was definitely much nicer, but it makes me wonder if some other hostel a block to the left tells it’s guests to avoid the PAX area… Like I said, I didn’t think it was in the nicest neighborhood.

This is the only photo I have of the neighborhood cause we did not feel very comfortable taking out our cameras and snapping away. Roberto took this pic cause he was so disappointed in his first impression of the city after always hearing how BsAs was the Paris of South America.

We had to check out of PAX and they did not have any more vacancies for the next night, so I used some Marriott points to book the Plaza Hotel. I was planning to do this for one night and it seemed like the perfect chance. We then planned on taking our side trip the following day, after maximizing our time at the Plaza.

I am not sure how much the Plaza costs per night but it is definitely a great hotel in a beautiful part of town (no disappointment photos here). We saw more Americans in the lobby than anywhere else in BsAs. The Marriott Plaza Hotel is a historic building right across from a beautiful park and very close to a busy area tailored for tourists. The staff was a little snooty with us when we wandered in with our backpacks, but I requested an upgrade to a room with a park view and they gave us one. But we did have to wait for it – the lady said the room wasn’t ready and to sit down and she would bring us our key when it was. After about 20 minutes when I went and asked if it was almost ready she looked at some paper and said it was. I wonder how long it was ready before I had asked. Other than that we found the concierge to be very helpful and the rest of check in and check out smooth.

Our corner room was very big (many of the rooms are tiny in this old hotel, so it helps to request a bigger room if need be) and we had a great view of the park from one big window and of the outdoor pool terrace from the other. The hotel and amenities were completely up to the Marriott standards and the building was also quite charming. One thing I didn’t like was the wi-fi wasn’t free in the rooms, but it was in the lobby. This is typical of Marriotts, anyway. We definitely had a very comfortable night there and they were happy to hang onto our bags all day after we checked out.

The Marriott was a great place to stay, but it felt a bit sterile and isolated from the city. It was truly an opposite experience from PAX, where we were tossed right into the bustle of the city to fend for ourselves. We felt totally safe and comfortable at the Marriott, but at the same time we didn’t feel like we were in BsAs. While I don’t think we fit in at the youthful PAX hostel, I don’t think the Marriott was where we belonged either. Especially with the loud American guy talking to the concierge in 1st grader English, explaining that he and his wife had “5 suitcases, and need either two taxis or a van to go to the airport,” because the one taxi that brought them there was “just too small for us.” We did not have a conversation with a single fellow guest, despite spending plenty of time in the public areas.

After those two nights we decided we would fit in best with something in between those two extremes. Not a fancy stuffy hotel with stuck up guests and staff, but also not a party hostel with a bunch of European kids looking to get drunk and laid. I’m sure Buenos Aires has plenty of options that would better suit us. I did notice some cute boutique hotels for fairly reasonable prices on Tripadvisor prior to booking, but the hostels were just so much cheaper.

After the second night we didn’t stay in a hotel or hostel, but slept on a bus. This sounds awful but it was actually quite comfortable and convenient – we were travelling to Mendoza (more on that in another post) by overnight bus and had booked cama (bed) suites. The price was about what we’d pay for a hotel and included dinner, snacks, and drinks. The seats folded all the way down to horizontal and included a full-sized footrest that made the whole arrangement about the size of a single bed. The seats were very comfortable and the ride was great for lulling us to sleep. I even had an awesome view of the incredible starry night over the plains of Argentina as I fell asleep.

The meal and drinks were served to us like on an airplane and both ways the steward was excellent. We also had movies: on the way there we saw the latest James Bond movie, and on the way back there were 3 – some John Travolta terrorist action movie I didn’t watch, a really sad holocaust movie called The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and Righteous Kill. Oddly enough on the way back all three movies were in English with Spanish subtitles, while on the way there the movie was all Spanish. We were very pleasantly surprised with the bus trip and will definitely use this option more in the future.

Once we got back to BsAs we just had one more night. I found another hostel online, Telmotango, that was cheaper than PAX and in a nicer part of San Telmo. It appears many of the hostels are in this neighborhood; real estate is probably cheaper there. We showed up there in the morning after arriving at the bus station and taking the subway over. It took a little while to find and walk to, but when we got there we were impressed with how cute it was.

Telmotango hostel is built in a converted old mansion and has a stained glass solarium as the common area. There are some rooms indoors and the rest are on two floors of outdoor access surrounding the solarium. The decor was really cute, with potted plants and flower boxes all over the place, and the hostel had a nice big terrace on the top floor. I was pleased with the room and how comfortable the bed was, as well as the bathrooms and common areas. The hostel did have alot of backpackers but there was a wider variety of guests, including some older people. The crowd seemed a little more low key that the PAX guests. I liked this hostel a lot better.

Since we were also camping this trip, we were pretty prepared with just about everything we needed to stay somewhere. But, for those new to hostels, there seems to be a range of amenities offered. From what I’ve seen, nearly all hostels do not provide shampoo, soap, or any other toiletries. I would definitely bring shampoo, conditioner, and body wash or a bar of soap if you do not already travel with them. Additionally, some places do not provide towels (although both of our hostels did), and I have yet to find a wash cloth anywhere in South America. I just bring one along. Even cheaper hostels probably will not provide sheets, or just “rent” them out for extra. Definitely something to be prepared for if staying in hostels. Oh and you DEFINITELY want flip flops for dorm style showers.

Buenos Aires definitely has lots of lodging options. Another popular choice seems to be renting an apartment in the city, with prices as low as $35 per night for a week. I would have definitely looked into an apartment rental if we were planning to stay in BsAs for a solid week, especially since it seems like many of them are in Recoleta. We really wanted to stay in that neighborhood but couldn’t find any hostels there. We both agreed that the hostels were both good, comfortable, cheap options. We look forward to staying in more in the future, in other cities!