My Experience At The Green Elephant Hostel In Cape Town, South Africa
I had searched desperately for an inexpensive (yet private) place to stay in Cape Town during my two weeks in the city, but I was unable to find any such location.
I had been lucky enough to secure an entire house in a part of Cape Town known as Observatory (because the young couple that normally lived in the house would be away on vacation for the dates I had requested), but the house wasn’t available until the 20th of March, which meant that I would need to find another place to stay for my first three nights in Cape Town after my tour with African Bikers had ended. .
Luckily the Green Elephant hostel was right down the street from the house I had rented and it had a single room available.
The room was terribly pricy (at approximately $42 USD per night – more than twice what I was paying in parts of Eastern Europe), but it was the best I could find under the circumstances. I paid for three nights… and this is what the place looked like when I showed up.
The management at the hostel was warm and inviting. I felt comfortable there, even though I am instinctively uncomfortable at any hostel or lodging location where I have to share my personal space with a bunch of grubby strangers.
My room (pictured below) was called the dolphin room and it was clean enough for my liking. But I don’t think I will ever understand why so many hostels around the world decorate their accommodations as though their clientele consists of nothing but kindergarten students. Do they think these bizarre paintings and countless posters taped to the walls of their property actually looked good or appeals in some strange way to their customers? I don’t think so!
If there had been wireless Internet in my room, I would have been happy. But because I had to sit in the hostel’s main lobby and share the Internet connection with sometimes a dozen or more other young backpackers, I wasn’t able to get any serious work done while I was at the Green Elephant.
Once my three days at the hostel was over, I simply walked my bicycle (now back in my possession after mailing it from Poland to South Africa) down the street and settled in to my new house in Observatory.
