Abort! Abort!

After forking out for our muddy yet refined adventure at Hell’s Gate, Glen and I were feeling the effects of living on a fixed budget and a high cost of living for two months. Taking advantage of the unsecured wireless internet connection we discovered in our motel room, we scoured the New Zealand seasonal backpacker’s work websites for some temporary employment.

We weren’t expecting much in the way of results from this job hunt, as we would only be available to work for one week at most. Nevertheless, one of the employers responded. He had advertised needing workers for squash weeding, and if we could make our way to Hastings, in the scenic and very fertile Hawkes Bay area, he would have work and accommodation for us.

We drove down on a Sunday. From the multiple phone conversations Glen had with him, we believed we would start work on Monday. Our contact would meet us in Hastings and escort us to the farm, where we would have beds at the modest price of $80 each for one week’s stay. Upon arriving at the arranged meeting point, we called our contact and he said he would be there in ten minutes. One hour and twenty minutes later he arrived, hardly acknowledged either of us, said absolutely nothing in regards to his extreme lateness, and led us on a ten minute drive to the farm and hour housing.

To say that the place was a roach motel would be putting it politely. I’m well aware that there are cockroaches in New Zealand, as there are in 99.7% of the world, but to have so many crawling around in such a filthy excuse of a bunkhouse was disgusting. I personally prefer my food cupboards to be relatively cockroach free, wheras these roaches used the food pantry as a thoroughfare. The beds were stained and boasted crusty patches on the mattress coverings, the garbage in the kitchen was completely infested with ants, and the bathroom had no toilet paper.

Our contact said that there wouldn’t be any work available for us on Monday (which was supposed to be our starting date). There would probably be no work for us on Tuesday either. We might be starting on Wednesday, at the earliest, but he explained that there were some German backpackers waiting for work and they would be given priority as they have staying there for several days on the farm. We might only have two or three days work a week, our fine fellow explained days, maybe four days at the most. He promised to call us with more information the following morning, and would drop off a key to the accommodations.

After we resigned ourselves to the general grottiness of the place, we hauled our bags in and wandered around the multi-winged backpacker’s complex. And who did we come across in one of the wings? One of the travellers we had been hanging out with at the Auckland hostel! He had been at the farm for a week already, had only worked a couple of days, and was spending most of his time twiddling his thumbs waiting for more work. A large number of the other people staying there were in a similar situation. Some of them did have work, but the impression we were given was that working days were few and far between. This bleak outlook, combined with the cagey, vague information given to us by our contact, the disgusting accommodation, and the sheer number of people who would be giving priority for work over us, led us to the conclusion that there was no work to be had, and that it would be a waste of time and money to stay.

So we did a runner! Early the following afternoon, after neither seeing or hearing from our contact, we flung our backpacks back into the car and took off before anyone could ask us to pay rent for our one night’s stay. So long dodgy work contractor! So long roach-filled backpacker’s shack! So long prospectless days of thumb-twiddling!

POOF! Gone with ninja-like stealth!

The Ugly Side of Hostels

As I mentioned earlier, I am now going to give the not-so-proverbial dirt on our Hobart hostel.

We elected to stay at Montgomery’s. In the YHA advertisements, it had billed itself as being "Hobart's most luxurious YHA" and promised a lively hotel atmosphere that would be good fun and good value for money. The rooms were more expensive than I would have normally liked, but the price of a dorm bed wasn’t too dreadful and I figured that it would be worth the cost due to the hostel’s convenient downtown location. Truthfully, luxury doesn't particularly interest Glen nor I. Cleanliness, on the other hand, does.

The hostel managers evidently feel that convenience of location outstrips the requirements of any good hostel to keep a reasonably clean, well-appointed place for guests to stay. The place, quite frankly, just isn’t up to scratch.

One would expect a hostel billing itself as "luxurious" to have kitchen accommodation that could reasonably provide for the 40+ guests that the hostel could hold at any given point of time. In the case of Montgomery’s, one would be wrong. This picture shows the kitchen in it’s entirety – it has one stove-top range, one functioning microwave, one broken microwave, two tables, a whole lot of dinner plates, and a whopping four bowls for stuff like soup or cereal. And as you can see, it was a considerable squeeze to fit six people in the kitchen at once:



The kitchen is on the first floor of the hostel, and as we mount the stairs to the floors containing the rooms, dorms, and TV/internet lounge, we start to witness the strange phenomenon of drywall holes:





The next stop we shall make on our tour is the TV/internet lounge itself. Mouldy old couches aside, we were rather aghast at the state of the ceiling. The paper, paint, plaster, or whatever the heck is covering the ceiling is bubbling up and flaking off in large areas:



Really large areas.

Next up is the dormitory. Funky smell aside (which I blame on the re-breathed sleep air of twelve people as opposed to negligence on the part of the hostel), I am left wondering what sort of pollutants are near this window, whether the pollutants are a result of interior or exterior air, and whether or not the hostel ever intends on actually cleaning said window:



And now, for the finale: the bathroom. In my option, hostels can be rated almost solely on the cleanliness of the bathroom. Soap and hand drying systems, be they blow-dryers or towels, should be available. Toilets should be properly cleaned. Shower stalls should be properly maintained and relatively free of serious mildew or mould build-up. As you can see, such was not the case:



Here’s a close-up:



The pictures don’t really do the mould justice. It crawled up the wall from the floor to at least chest level, a good five feet for sure. It was also thick. It was thick and furry, like a caterpillar. And the mould wasn’t just limited to that one line of grout – it was on the opposite side of the shower stall and around the grouting of the floor basin. Oh, and the toilets were not properly cleaned. Nor were there ever hand towels or dryers. As for soap, one would be lucky to find one of those tiny bars of soap that hotels leave in their guest suites for complimentary use. Usually, there was no soap at all.

Is it any wonder that Glen came away from the Hobart hostel with a really, really nasty cold? "Luxurious" my ass!