Hostal Colonial

I hate leaving a bad review, but I feel I have to so others don't end up in the same situation. We booked three days, for the 17th and 19-20th of February, because we planned to go on the Acatenango tour on the 18th. The first day was fine. We left our luggage in the room after a staff member said she would move it later. We returned from the tour around noon on the 19th, and she said she needed to clean the room, so we waited in the garden. My wife and I saw our bags still there and assumed nobody had booked the room on the 18th. Once the cleaning was done, we checked in again. We went out twice, first for lunch and laundry, then around 6pm to get groceries. At about 10:30pm, when I was getting ready for bed, I spotted a lot of ants on the storage unit going for my yogurt. We told the staff member, and she wiped them away with a towel. She seemed to say we shouldn't keep sweet food in the room because of the ants. We found that odd, since guests can eat something sweet in a hostel room, but we threw the yogurt away and checked for more ants. There were many again, stretching from the storage unit to the corner of the room. Then we saw a dead cockroach at the end of the trail. My wife screamed and was speechless. We called the staff member back and showed her what had happened. She said the cockroach must have come with us from Acatenango because it wasn't there when she cleaned. That might have happened, but we couldn't know. We didn't know when it had died. It could have been there when she cleaned, come in while the door was open, or come with us. Either way, there were ants and a cockroach, and she was busy blaming us without apologizing for the situation, including the ants. My wife called a friend in Mexico, who has lived there for more than 10 years, to help us sort it out because our Spanish isn't very good. Nothing changed. The staff member kept repeating the same things, so we decided to leave immediately. As we packed, she said we had to pay for the stay. That was upsetting. She hadn't apologized and still asked us for the cost. We didn't pay. We checked out at 23:30pm, then spent an hour looking for somewhere else to stay. Sorry to the other guests for the noise we made at that time. We could understand that ants or a cockroach might appear. We wouldn't have been so angry if she'd apologized first. The staff and her boss are in charge of Hostal Colonial, a place providing accommodation to guests, but we felt they didn't do their best and treated us poorly. This wasn't the service we expected, and the whole situation was unhappy and terrible. It left us disappointed, and we think this kind of behavior can give Antigua and Guatemala a bad image. I'm not writing because of a passing or personal bad mood. They need to realize what they did and learn what accommodation service means before focusing on money. I don't know what excuse they could give for this problem. They may have their own reasons, and it could be a good hostel, but I can't call it the best.

A comfortable, backpacker friendly place. My room had a private bathroom, but there was no sink, which was the one letdown. Very little English is spoken, so you'll need to know some Spanish.

The bed was comfy, and the place felt clean and cozy. The staff were very friendly.

Quiet, clean, and good service. A great motel.