South America: Camping or Hostel?

(This is an old post, from Nov. 26, 2006.)

Say you're traveling (with your significant other, if applicable), and you come upon a small town with only two options for lodging for the night. Would you rather (A) sleep in a hostel in a shared room with strangers, or (B) camp outdoors in a tent? That is the question of the day. Which would you choose?

For anyone who's interested, right now we're spending a couple of days in the charming town of El Bolsón in Argentina's Lake District. Nestled among gray mountains capped with (melting) snow and lush green fields full of these dazzling purple and pink cone-shaped wildflowers, El Bolsón has a totally laid back vibe, which I understand is in stark contrast to the bustling and cosmopolitan resort town of Bariloche, just a couple of hours to the north. This morning we perused the weekly artisans' fair, where local vendors were selling handcrafted leather bags, handmade silver jewelry, and homemade beer, among other things. After lunch, we had what Lonely Planet describes as arguably Argentina's best ice cream (at Heladería Jauja, if you ever find yourself here). It was pretty damn good.

Okay, back to the question. This situation actually came up for us during our four-day/three-night hiking trek in Torres Del Paine National Park in southern Chile (Nov. 10-13). Because the only indoor accommodations along the park's popular "W" trail are shared rooms in the refugios (mountain refuges), we would have to sleep in a shared room for the first time EVER. This gave me pause. Share our sleeping space? With people we don't know? My first thought was security. Will our stuff be safe? Do I need to sleep with my money belt on? Do I need to put R's camera under my pillow? And then my second thought was...

Ew.

What if our roommates are slobs? What if they have B.O.? What if they take off their nasty, sweaty socks and put them on the window sill, precariously hanging above my water bottle? What if they snore? What if they fart in their sleep? Can I really sleep with a stranger's fart just hanging there, lingering in the air in the crowded, stuffy room?

I never liked the idea of sharing a room with strangers, and neither did R. Before we decided to hike the "W," we had ALWAYS booked our own UN-shared room, double accommodation. Five years ago, when we tromped around Central Europe for six weeks after I took the bar, we booked private double rooms on that trip, even though hosteling was and is extremely popular in Europe and is supposed to be a great way to meet fellow travelers. Now, I'm five years older and five years grumpier, and I have five more years of habits and idiosyncrasies that I feel like only a private sleeping and living space can accommodate. Like, to use one of the previous examples, what if I'm the one that needs to fart in the room? Those are some nice choices there in a shared room: I can let it out as silently as possible and hope no one notices, all the while living with the guilt that I foisted upon these unsuspecting strangers the very thing that I detest and fear about the shared room situation; I can hold it and be uncomfortable all night, and try not to burst out laughing at the idea that I'm trying to hold it ALL NIGHT; or I can get out of bed, walk to the shared bathroom, and fart on some sleepy-eyed backpacker who just wanted to brush his teeth in peace. No thanks to all of those. At least in a normal double room, I can do what I always do when the gas needs to be passed: calmly inform R of the situation, politely excuse myself, and hurry to our private bathroom to let it out silently. (Yeah, right.)

Anyway, my first inclination was that I would rather camp than share a room. Then I remembered a split-second later that I don't like camping. We were totally pampered on the Inca Trail in Peru: the tour company provided the tents, sleeping bags and mats for us, and their porters carried all the equipment and set up and took down everything for us. And even on this, the cushiest camping trip you could possibly imagine (they also cooked all our meals and woke us up gently with coca tea every morning), I concluded that I don't really enjoy camping. It's cold in the tent. Things get wet when it rains during the night, or in the morning from the dew. It's dirty. The campsite's bathrooms are usually nasty. And it's crowded in the tent, what with your bags and shoes and the sleeping bags and all that.

So, in short, I was not happy with either option. However, in the end, the idea of a warm bed with blankets and a pillow won out, and so we decided to try the shared room thing. We found spaces in the refugios for the first and third nights, but the refugio we wanted was full on the second night, so we would need to rent camping equipment and camp outside anyway. So I would get to try both, and weigh them against each other.

And where did I come out, after all of this?

I'd say it's a draw.

The first night (shared room) was a little weird. After dinner, R and I walked into our room to find that the lights were out and that the four others in our six-person shared room were already asleep. We hadn't even met these people yet, and now we were going to crawl into our adjacent bunk beds and just go to sleep. It was a bit unnerving. In the morning, we met them briefly and saw that they were just normal people, but we didn't know that lying there during the night.

I didn't like the lack of control I had over what I could be doing right before bed. Because the lights were out and the others were asleep, I couldn't read the Lonely Planet, or talk to R, or do any of the other stupid little things you can do when you're by yourselves. We had to try to get ready for bed in the dark, using only R's muffled headlamp as a guiding light. To entertain myself, I made a game out of it and pretended I was a secret agent in training, moving as silently as a cat and only as much as necessary to complete the mission. Don't wake the strangers. It's amazing how much body control you need to change out of travelers' pants quietly. They're made out of this nylon-like synthetic material that's really loud when you crinkle or rumple it. It took me like five minutes to take my pants off because I was moving so slowly, but I didn't wake anyone up, so I decided that I won the game.

And on the third night (our second night sharing a room), we met a delightful Australian couple who were in the last month of a year-long round-the-world trip (!). (Damn, those Aussies know how to live.)

As for camping, the tent was already set up for us, and we could use the indoor bathrooms in the refugio, so it was cushier than normal. It was crowded in the tent, and I had a sore back the next day due to the extremely thin mat, but for the most part it was fine. There was one gas-related incident that I'm sure R will blog about someday. It makes me chuckle just thinking about it.

Neither sharing a room nor camping were as bad as I thought they would be. So, in the end, although they're still not my first choice, I would be willing to share a room or camp outside if we need to. And if I have to choose between them, I think I'll take the clean sheets, warm blankets, and roof over your head that come with sharing a room. I just need to make sure the hostel doesn't have beans or cabbage on the dinner menu that night.

D