Cotopaxi Trip Day 2

Friday August 22

I got up about 7.30am and Jayne got up about 8.15am. We got to breakfast about 9am. Guests can have breakfast anytime from 7 to 10am.


The costs

The cost for a private room is $30/per person per night (if one person wanted to stay there I imagine it would be $60, maybe less as only one person would be eating). This includes three meals, with coffee, tea, and soft drinks free. In the shared room it’s $25/per person per night. So, for an extra $10 a couple gets a lot more. All the food is great. The dinner is gourmet, which you’d only find in an expensive restaurant.

So the prices are great.

The usual breakfast consists of small fruit salad, omelet, with brown break and jam. For drinks there is coffee, tea, and fresh fruit juice.


What’s wrong with the room?

Katherine and Tarquin run a good hostel and the make sure there is good service and food but there are things that Jayne and I saw immediately that could be better.

In the private rooms, the shower/bath, sink and bathroom is on the first floor. The bad thing about this is, there are no curtains on the window or the door (the door had windows in it). Therefore, if anyone walks by they can see you washing your crouch!!

I mean, really!!

The bathroom does have a door, so you only have privacy there. OK, there are usually no people walking by, but I did hear some people walk by. After all, they don’t know what you can see inside and it’s normal that people walk around the hostel, hotel or wherever a person is staying at to check the grounds. And if it’s a night, they don’t have to be near your window to see in.

The bathtub is narrow, and Jayne almost slipped because of it.

The shower curtain is too short so water falls on the outside of the tube.

There is no furniture for all practical purposes. Rooms should not be rented out until there is enough furniture. Later in the trip I asked Tarqin about this and he said, “The money we had, we used for starting the greenhouse, but we will get more furniture.”

He should put priorities first. Get the furniture first then later start the greenhouse. You should never rent out a room until its ready, after all guests pay the bills and gives him a profit.

I thought to myself, after seeing hooks on the wall in main house, to at least have a strip of wood with about 4-5 hooks downstairs by the door that people can put their jackets and hats on. In the bedroom have a set of hooks on each side of the bed.

Later in the trip we found this out…The cleaner doesn’t come in everyday but only after we checked out. There was no change of towels and the floor got pretty dirty during the four days we were there. He should have at least a broom and dust pan there for guests. Even if the room is cleaned every day, maybe the guests would like the floor cleaned and would do it themselves because people walk around in dirt and mud, so the floor gets dirty quickly.

The dormitory is cleaned out every day but the private rooms should be cleaned out, too.

The very least he should have done, which would not have been the best thing is, to have curtains on the windows (for privacy), have a broom and dust bin in each room, and have hooks on the wall in each room.

Though the next problem I’m about to talk about is not with the room, it’s related to it. The four steps to the cabin are made of dirt with stones on top and wood to hold back the dirt. There are wood pegs that hold the wood plank in place. Now this is terrible. Some of the pegs are higher than the wood planks. You can easily trip over it, so we had to be careful, especially at night. With wood, it will rot in time – a short time in this climate. Also, he has small lights along the trail but not enough of them. These lights work on photocells, but without enough in front of the private cabin, you need a flashlight.

I’d have tiles down as they last longer and they won’t need replacing with the wood rotting. I know Tarquin wants his place eco-friendly, but who would give a rat’s ass if they fell. Besides, tiles last a long time, is not like plastic where you use it for a short time and throw it away where it will pollute wherever it’s dumped.

At least, if you were going to do it cheap, do it right – and not have pegs sticking out the top of the step where people can trip – day or night.

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Tarquin asked Jayne if she would make a painting on a pyramid shaped board that would have all the mountains that are in view. He would hang this up where the patio is at the main house. She said she would be glad to. However, she would need a picture of how all the mountains look like (there are seven in view). But since it’s mostly cloudy, she had no idea how they look like. He said he’ll find pictures and give them to her to look at.

Jayne painted another mountain that was in view on a long wood board she found. She did another one on a piece of tile, too.

While Jayne painted, I helped Tarqin lay some rocks on the road on his property. We took wheel barrels to a place that had a lot of rocks, loaded it up and took them down the road and put in the ruts that were in the road. We worked about 1.5 hours. Then we went back to the house to have lunch. During this time it started to rain.

The work was hard, especially since we aren’t in shape and there’s less oxygen at this altitude.

This morning a couple went on a horseback ride. The cost is $25/per person for a day’s ride – a good price. Some other people went to Cotopaxi.

For dinner there was rabbit, which a worker killed. Among the animals that they have here are rabbits which are used for dinner when they get big enough. Jayne and I both had vegetarian meals, as Jayne doesn’t like rabbit. We both had mussaki.

When we were eating desert Jayne and I smelled poop! I said, “Do you want to eat in the living room?” She said no. I asked Tarquin that we smelled poop. Another person said she smelled it, too. He said it must have been the dog. He asked a worker to see if it was so. She said yes, but she didn’t want to clean it up. So, he said to tell Katherine and she’ll tell a paid worker to clean it up. He said he is having his dog house trained and has the paper in the corner of the dining room.

Can you imagine training the dog to go on the paper in the room where guests eat!! Where is the common sense in this? Why doesn’t he have it in the room where his family eats? I think I know the answer – they don’t want to smell it! But it seems ok to have the paying guests smell it!
When we got back to our room, the fire was nearly out. Jayne and I tried to start it, but it must have been the log was damp. The worker didn’t have the small pieces of wood under the big log either. So we had a chilly evening. In the evening is when we like to take a shower as the room is warm, whereas in the morning it’s cold.

I’ll have to tell the worker about this.