I Am Currently Living in a Garage in Medellín
I don't think this is the life my parents envisioned for me.
Hello and welcome to Hostel Takeover Season Three!
I am currently in Medellín, Colombia where I am spending a month volunteering at Rock Hostel, a rock music themed hostel. In exchange for twenty-six hours of work a week I get free lodging in the hostel’s “volunteer room” which is actually just the garage. I share this garage with five people and a non-trivial amount of bed bugs.
And I’m having the time of my life.
I arrived in Colombia almost a month ago. I spent a week in Bogotá before making my way to Medellín where I had arranged to spend the month volunteering. I knew I wanted to work in a hostel in Colombia and I had heard amazing things about Medellín so I once again turned to my trusty friend Worldpackers to find a hostel in need of volunteers. After eliminating the hostels with bad reviews or an inconvenient location I was left with one option ... a rock music themed hostel appropriately named Rock Hostel.
What does a rock music themed hostel look like? Well for starters the hostel is decorated with album posters, rock records, instruments and band graffiti. Each of the rooms is labeled with a band name. For example, the volunteer room garage is labeled with a Mötley Crüe sign. To supplement the rock ambiance the manager, Javi, is always rock music playing. After this month I will have heard enough Red Hot Chili Peppers for a lifetime. I have tried to play other genres of music and it has not gone over well.
All the decorations are really cute except for the drum set that is unfortunately located right next to the garage. I have been woken up multiple times by the sound of people playing the drums poorly.
Similar to my experiences in New Orleans and Monterrey, I am working in exchange for free accommodation. Rock Hostel has a twenty-four hour reception desk so the other volunteers and I take turns working reception. This comes out to each of us working about twenty-six hours a week. The work is straightforward. I check people in and out, sell drinks and open the door whenever someone rings the buzzer. I also occasionally clean the kitchen, restock the beer, and make coffee. Once or twice a week I have to work the night shift (12am-7am) which is, to use the scientific term, gross.
All the volunteers sleep in the garage. There are six beds in total, four bunk beds and two normal beds. When I arrived there was only one open bed so that’s the one I took and let’s just say my bed is … unique.
To start, it’s insanely tall.
I’m 5’8’’ so using my height for reference I would say that bed is well over six and a half feet of the ground. It has no side rails so I sleep exclusively on the third of the bed closest to the wall.
It’s also spray painted with green and black dots. Why did someone do that? Who knows. Maybe they were inspired by the moldy food in the fridge. Either way it just adds to the chaotic energy of the room.
And finally not only is the bed remarkably tall, it also sways like crazy. Every time I climb up and down or even roll over it moves. A lot. My only comforting thought is that maybe it’s designed to sway with motion similar to how skyscrapers are designed to sway slightly with the wind. But that doesn’t seem to be a promising theory.
There is however one singular pro of my precarious bunk bed.
No bed bugs.
The bed below mine is occupied by my friend Clare who arrived a few days before me. Since Clare arrived she has slowly accumulated bites all over her body. Medellín is not known to have a ton of mosquitos so we decided to inspect her mattress and what did we find? Bed bugs.
Ah.
And given the fact that our beds are attached to one another you would think that I too should have bed bugs but so far I haven’t been bitten. My theory is that those little fuckers couldn’t climb all the way up to my mile high mattress. Either that or every time I climb in and out of bed the sway of the bed frame shakes them all back down onto Clare. Sorry Clare!
It appears as though my bed’s weaknesses have also proven to be its strengths.
We have since fumigated the room for bed bugs and the problem seems to be resolved although only time will tell. This is my second encounter with bed bugs on this trip and considering how many hostels I plan on staying in over the course of this year I will probably encounter them again. Bed bugs are making the yearlong shitlist for sure.
I plan to spend a little over two months in Colombia and one of the things I’ve noticed is that housing here is very affordable, especially if you stay in hostels. You can easily get a bed in a shared dorm with free breakfast for under $10 a night. I was curious to estimate my savings from my free accommodation and to investigate if those savings were worth the twenty-six hours I work a week. I took the weekly price of staying in the hostel (which is what I save from being a volunteer) and divided it by the number of hours I work to get an hourly rate. I also did this math for my hostels in Monterrey and New Orleans.
At Rock Hostel, the accommodation I receive in exchange for my work as a receptionist values my time at about two dollars an hour. And that’s calculated using the price of a normal dorm room in the hostel, not the garage. I’ll be the first to admit that volunteering for free lodging in Colombia doesn’t make a ton of economical sense.
So then why would I (or anyone for that matter) do it?
That’s a fair question. After all, given my hourly rate I would be better off trying to teach english or find a freelance coding gig online or, perhaps, not working at all. I have found that I get a few benefits from hostel work. First off it gives me some structure and routine to my week. For me traveling around aimlessly for months on end would be actually a bit crazy inducing. Without being required to be somewhere at least some of the time I would have no urgency to do anything.
I also like that it forces me to stay in one place for longer. Typically when you volunteer in a hostel you’re required to stay for a minimum of one month. Getting to slowly explore a city like Medellín is more enjoyable than cramming everything into one week. Plus I can get a sense of what it would be like to actually live here.
And finally volunteering for a month gives me a more permanent sense of community. Traveling nonstop means I’m constantly making new friends and then saying good bye to them a week later. It can be socially exhausting. It’s such a treat to come home everyday to a place you already have friends. Queue up the Cheers theme song.
I am having an amazing time in Medellín. It’s such an interesting and unique place and I have so much more to share with you all. But for now let’s all just pray that my mile high mattress keeps the bed bugs away.
And as a parting gift here is a picture of the garage from the street when we open the door all the way to air out the smell of feet.
