Hostal Yakumama

Beautiful courtyard garden where you can sit during the day with cool, relaxing music. Many walls are decorated with wonderful murals, painted by different artists and relating to Cuenca and the people of the area. The bistro and bar are popular with locals and ex-pats living in Cuenca. The food is tasty and beautifully presented. There is often live music in the evenings from local or visiting bands. Friendly and helpful staff.

Great location, only 300 m from the cathedral and main square and river in opposite direction. Food was additional but excellent and great value and on the Wednesday night there were a couple of bands playing who were great. I stayed in a private room with en-suite shower, water nice and hot. Good internet.

It was difficult to contact a person on reception. Once in the morning when I wanted to leave early to go to Cajas I needed to telephone the hostel to get someone to unlock the door. Then when I wanted to check out but leave my bag in the luggage room for the day, the internal bell to call reception didn’t work, the front door bell didn’t produce anyone and the telephone call wouldn’t go through so ended asking for help from the restaurant staff.

The location was amazing. Everything was great and they have a great staff. We where able to go out really late at night and even if we came back late, they were happy to open the main gate. It is a super clean place and the room was super clean too. The hot shower was great and the place in general was super nice and friendly.

For my personal like, the bed was a bit to hard but nothing too crazy to be honest. The doors to the private rooms could be improved by renewing the doors for a more modern doors because these are double doors and they close and lock all good, there's still some gaps on the middle between the two doors and the curtain isn't that long to fully cover the entire door. Other than that, it was a great place.

I appreciated the spaciousness of the room and the hostel in general. Hot water and a warm duvet with a blanket.

The lack of a communal kitchen, which is essential for backpackers, so I decided to change to a hostel after a couple of nights.