Biohostal Mindo Cloud Forest

Location is in town and birds can be seen. Fortunately you can walk into town and have meals and take little trips out to the Butterfly Reserve, the Minjoy chairlift and to the Yellow House to see great birds and sit for hours watching hummingbirds at their feeders. But this guest house has NOTHING to recommend it.

Problems from the get-go! We had a long standing reservation and decided to add two more nights, but this was hard to do on the booking.com site. At first, it changed my reservation for a day that I had not even requested. Then it added two extra nights but did not respect my original reservation which was made at a much better price. We commented on this arriving at the hostel, and I spoke with the owner who was less than courteous and did not take this issue into account. After my complaint about the problem checking in and the price change, I received a letter from the owner's son asking what had happened. I took my time to write a long description of the events, but then NEVER HEARD BACK! The place was dirty and most of the spaces were decrepit or falling apart, plaster falling from the porch ceiling, couches with just raw open foam for cushions, drinking water not kept filled, only a single boy employee there most of the time. We were told upon arrival that there was only one room with two single beds but we later discovered this to be untrue by exploring around and asking the only relief employee about it. She finally moved us to a more spacious room with two more ample beds on another floor. WE WERE THE ONLY GUESTS!! But there were bugs in the room and I awoke one morning with a huge 1 and 1/2 inch long welt on my cheek below my eye. We saw later a bug on the wall above my bed which turned out to be a kissing bug or Triatominae which is the vector for the dangerous Chagas Disease! Then two other mornings I awoke with nasty bites and welts on my fingers, even though we had dispatched with the kissing bug and had used repellent and shaken down the whole room for bugs! NOT bedbug bites. The breakfast had issues as well: the milk tasted like soap, they had no butter for the bread and jam for the bread only one day. We were told they were out of jam and never had butter. Coffee bad, and just one egg, a cold crêpe! Not a maid to be seen.