Bear Packer Hostel

I travel to Cusco often. I’ve stayed at this place the last 3 times I visited Cusco. Great service, nice place, great value for what you get. Highly recommended.

Great location, 5 minute walk from the market, 10-20 from other main squares (plaza de armas) and markets (San Blas). They store your bags for free while you are out on hikes or excursions. They also pack you a "breakfast bag" upon request if you have an excursion before breakfast starts (bread, banana, cereal). Bed was very comfortable and our private room was really spacious! Breakfast is a nice variety -- bread and butter/jam, one egg scrambled, some cereal and yogurt (pre portioned), fruit, and coffee / tea. However, we did have some issues : 1) the hot water in the shower in our rooms would literally stop working after 30 seconds, we would have to turn the tap off, wait a minute, and then turn it back on -- it seemed like the hot water was "charging" during that time. 2) the breakfast staff makes it seem like you are bothering them when asking for the eggs and yogurt/cereal that the breakfast is supposed to provide. They are often busy chatting amongst themselves or making themselves food / eating their food. I have no problem with this (they need to eat and socialize too!) however we genuinely got some dirty / dark looks when "interrupting" them to ask for breakfast, as well as when I asked if I could remove their food they had finished microwaving so as to microwave one of the breads (which was stale from clearly the previous day). 3) there are no real clear windows for natural light in the hostel, so it feels very cold and enclosed, and there is no real sound isolation -- one night I was up for an hour because people were chatting and laughing drunkenly somewhere in the hostel from 2-3am. Overall a pretty solid place in Cusco - I would recommend and stay again, but would encourage management to look into the hot water shower issues and perhaps for breakfast staff to not make guests feel as though they are inconveniencing them by asking for breakfast.