Bodhi Santa Catalina

 What a nice place! 

The Hostel is basically a two bedroom house, with large kitchen/living room and front porch as common areas. The bedrooms have been stuffed with bunk-beds - but that's ok with me. I don't need a whole room for myself, and whether there is one or 4 more people in my room makes no difference to me.

In the yard there are 7 cabanas. I think, their business model is to offer budget accommodations, and increase the overall income by having more people paying a little less, than having few people paying a lot.

The house is interesting, to me:

It seems, money was no topic for the person who had it built! The ceiling of the bedrooms is made of teak wood - both the beams as well as the flooring of the space above the rooms. So are the windows and doors. Absolutely beautiful! Common room, front porch, and bathroom is tiled with natural stone - slate, it seems. The kitchen island also clad in natural stone, the countertop marble.

There are 5 pillars supporting the roof over the front porch, and another 5 for the back porch. All 10 of them seem to be of Cadre de Tigre - a tree that is endangered and no longer permitted to be cut. Yet, here there are 10 that were cut down...

Initially, I thought, maybe the person ended up not liking the location after all, and sold the place for that reason. But, now I think it is not the location, but some aspects of the architecture. The windows are very beautiful, however way to small. The frames are of massive teak. One of the sashes is sliding. The rooms are very dark, since there's not much glass area. Also, there's hardly any draft developing with the tiny space that is actually able to be opened.

Also, the house is on the Calle Principal, which is good for a hotel, restaurant, or other business but not for a private home. The yard is rather small - even without the cabanas it would not really be enough for garden, fruit trees, and such.

So, I guess, the person dumped this place and built something else somewhere else. I hope for them, that they learned their lesson and asked for much bigger opening in the walls for windows and doors...

I am glad to have been allowed to learn that lesson, too, without having had to pay for it! :)