As experienced "budget" level travellers, we quite often, over the years have found ourselves in some rather sketchy accommodations. Today's spot was pretty high on the "are you sure this is safe?" scale.
Our typical process for securing accommodations is to use look for the best possible deal (aka the cheapest) place we can find on AirBnb or Booking.com. Some conditions that we factor in are - proximity to our transportation - if it's close enough to walk, we know that we'll save both time and money. We generally don't book shared accommodations and staying in hostel style dorm rooms is definitely out. We also tend to favour staying in places that have cooking facilities - especially if we are there for more than one night. One other big consideration is whether or not the place offers breakfast - not that this will save any money - it does save us the hassle of arranging food for the morning - as often we are on our way very early.
We booked our accommodation in Tena, Ecuador through AirBnb on October 22 (ie, 5 months in advance) so we had about as much choice as possible. We settled on the not-so-creatively named "Apartment in Tena" as it checked off many of the requirements on our list: private room, lowest price in town - $35 USD, cooking facilities and a 6 minute walk from the bus station. Almost perfect!
During the booking process, we always have a look at Google's Street View to see what the neighbourhood looks like. This is always quite revealing. Recently Paul stayed in a place that was so new that Street View didn't even show the building! Our research into the Tena showed Steet View didn't actually go as far as our apartment. We could see that the cobblestones would end, but the places around looked reasonable. There was a store and two restaurants on the corner. It seemed pretty reasonable, so we didn't think more about it until March.
Near the beginning of our trip, we are please to see the "instructions for arrival" were shared and everything seemed to be in order. This is the brief version: "Send a message on WhatsApp to my mother in law, and she will pick you up. Or call one of two other people. They only speak Spanish. Or write a message to the host to help."
As instructed, before leaving Quito, we sent a message. When we arrived in Tena 6 hours later, there was still no reply. We tried another message and a call. Nothing. We tried the other numbers. Nothing.
Since we knew roughly where to go, we walked to the intersection you can see in the photo. Upon arrival, we called again to the mother-in-law. She answered and spoke so quickly that we couldn't really get the gist. ("we", of course means Gayle - because Paul only understands Spanish that is related to food.)
Luckily, two obviously lost tourists with large back packs stand out a little in the back streets of Tena! We (again Gayle) talked to two women who thought that we should walk down the "lane past the garbage cans". We took a couple of steps in that direction and it seemed like someone's private path, lots of garbage and a dog. Not feeling in any way safe, we turned back. This wasn't going quite as well as planned.
Another passerby went to ask his wife. He came back and confirmed that we should proceed. After rounding the corner we were greeted with a cheerful "buenas tardes" by Connie, a 10 year old girl, who summoned her mother to help us. Tatianna was great to try to help get things figured out. She looked on her list and wasn't able to see our booking. We showed her to the info on our phone and she asked - did you book it a long time ago? Seems like booking in October was part of the problem as they forgot about us.
Little Connie showed us the suite, the wifi information and how to use the water filter. After all this, we had finally found our place to sleep.
A few other notes about the "Apartment in Tena":
- The shower was warm, but there were no towels
- The dogs in the neighbourhood fuss and fight all night
- There were tiny little ants all over the table when we got up. They now likely live in our computers.
- The stove didn't work, so we warmed up coffee water in the oven - worked fine.
After all this, we probably would only recommend the "Apartment in Tena" to a select few.
