The hostel is in a quiet residential neighborhood, about a 10 minute walk from a beautiful beach with a surf break. We stayed in a double room – which was a small one room cottage/shack, big enough for a double bed and room to walk around it, but little space for luggage. It was dark, damp and smelled like it had mold issues, not surprising given the rain forest like setting. The porch was small but large enough for two to sit on. We had one meal from them – a braai dinner, which was basic but good and filling. The bar was funky and cozy and a nice place to have a drink and socialize. The pool area was neat though the pool wasn’t well taken care of (not a surprise given their incompetent staff - not including the Zulu staff, they were wonderful!). The kitchen was open and airy and relatively functional, but small. The big issue with the kitchen is that the staff uses it to make the evening meal for everyone at the hostel. This made it a bit crowded if you want to cook when they do. More annoying is the fact that the evening hostel staff doesn’t actually do the dishes that night. They leave them there, occupying much of the kitchen and blocking the sink, for the unfortunate morning staff, making it rather cumbersome to cook your own meal. All this said, the dampness and size of the room and the mess in the kitchen could be forgiven as one can’t expect much at 240 Rand a night however; the staff are absolutely useless (excluding the ones that clean the place during the day and cook the staff meals). We left wondering what exactly most of them DID, aside from getting completely drunk, playing loud music till the wee hours of the morning and screwing up guest’s bills because they were too hung over.
I will say that our first night there was okay. We went to bed to the sound of loud music from the bar figuring we could handle it until 11 pm (there are signs all over the place stating that people must be quiet after 11 pm). Sure enough the music was shut off and we managed to get good nights sleep. Our second night was a disaster. The music was relentless and loud and kept us awake until 3am. We left our room twice to use the bathroom, once at 2 am when we bumped into two drunken staff stumbling back to their shack. I asked them to have the bar turn the music down, full well knowing they probably wouldn’t (and they didn’t). Then my husband got up at 3 am and bumped into another drunken stumbling staff member. The next morning we were too exhausted to get up and surf. We were also too angry to stay. We had originally planned to use the M&M as our base for the area and to organize our activities through them. After such a terrible night we decided it was worth the extra money to stay somewhere actually run by adults! To top it off, just as we were leaving I noticed the staff table had several bottles of lice-remover shampoo on it (and saw a staffer take one to the dorm room she was staying in) – lovely! We will forever call it the lice and luna and we will never return.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
