Auberge de Jeunesse Nouméa

I got to the hostel, not having actually booked a reservation, as their online system wouldn’t let me book same day and I tried to do it past midnight yesterday. But the advertised price on their website was also cheaper than the booking.com price so I figured I would just pay in person.

It turns out that they have the strangest reception hours of any hostel I’ve ever seen, open only from 8am-11am and 3pm-6pm. As I got there at 8:30pm, no one was there, but thankfully someone hanging out outside the gate told me the code to get in. I guess it’s times like this that looking like a tourist is handy haha.

The actual hostel was quite nice inside and I was able to put my stuff down and look around. But I still needed to get a bed for tonight, and no one seemed to be around. Finally a lady came up to me asking if I needed anything, and I told her the situation. It turns out she works as a cleaner here, and offered to call the owner.

After talking on the phone with him, and passing the phone to me, he basically said that he couldn’t accommodate me tonight. He was not flexible at all and seemed to just not want to help cause it was after hours. He’s like there’s no beds ready, it’s not set up it’s not possible, there’s no sheets on the beds. But like I knew there were free beds (there were actually so many) and I can just put the sheets on myself, it’s a hostel. After much attempt at convincing and pleading, and feeling a bit dejected, he still wouldn’t budge.

So then I sat down and figured out what to do. I could just stick around and camp out in the common area of the hostel with my air mattress. Or I could book the next cheapest place close to here (which was going to be ~CA$130 and pretty fancy). As I was looking at hotels, a guy came up to me and was like “I can’t just leave you stranded with no place to sleep for the night” and he gave me the keys to a room and locker and clean sheets and said to pay in the morning. I still don’t know if it was the same guy as on the phone but I was very thankful. And with the cheaper in person price I saved about CA$20! And the whole four nights cost me about what the one night at the fancy hotel would have.

Other than that kerfuffle, the hostel was actually really nice. It was on a hill overlooking downtown and had beautiful views of the city, which really has similar vibes to colonial Caribbean (or so I would assume). Everyone got a little kitchen locker with their own plate, cup, bowl, and utensils, and a locker in the walk in fridge too. A huge kitchen, I was able to save some money and cook my own meals while I was here— it’s by far the most expensive country on the trip so far, even just for basic food!

After getting settled in, that first night I made fried spam and instant noodles which I had brought over from Vanuatu lolЧитать далее