I would not recommend the Hospedaje San Francisco to my friends.
Located just off Panajachel, Guatemala´s main market and tourist road, the Hospedaje San Francisco boasts of ¨private bathrooms¨ and ¨comfortable prices.¨ For 35 Quetzales a person (roughly $4.50) you can get a double bed, a private bathroom, and a roll of toilet paper. The rooms don´t boast something as luxurious as door handles, but a padlock and some hooks screwed into the door actually make this place seem quite quaint.
In the daylight the rooms appeared nice enough, but at night the flourescent bulb hanging from the ceiling (where a light fixture had once been) illuminated our room´s finer details. Among the amenities the kindly owner forgot to mention, include: seven spiders perched in several webs spread across the room; one light fixture hanging limply from cables above our bed; the aforementioned roll of toilet paper, but no toliet seat to sit upon to use said toilet paper; the false assurance of hot water; and some rather noisy upstairs neighbors.
After pulling the bed into the center of the room, and away from the majority of spiders congregating on or near our headboard, Jess and I layed down for bed knowing that this we would be only one night, as we were heading to another town in the morning. About half way though a dream I was having centering on the reunion of a former roomate of mine and his Acappella group, the owner´s rooster decided it would be a good time to begin our wake-up call. As there were no phones in any of the rooms, I might have considered this a nice gesture by the owner. However, I do not recall discussing a wake-up call, let alone a time, with said owner. Of course, the rooster decided it would be a good idea to crow for five minutes, every fifteen minutes, over the next five hours. This started at 1 A.M. I don´t know about the rest of the world, but the roosters in Guatemala in have got to be some of the dumbest in the world. This was like the worst snooze button ever.
It didn´t take us long to get ready in the morning. The shower was ice cold and we had a bus to catch up with. While we saved some dollars, we might have been wise to heed the advice another visitor had left on the wall in pencil. Hidden behind the door when we first saw the room, the note simply stated, ¨This room is Nasty.¨Touche fellow traveler. Touche.
- Josh, Sunday Morning (February 11, 2007)
