Hostel Lottery

One thing we found in many places is that the hostelworld and guidebook descriptions of hostels may have little or no relation to the actual experience at the hostel. The hostelworld description of our hostel in Bariloche (Patanuk Lake) didn't come close to describing how nice the rooms are, or the amazing view. On the other end, Hosteria Teuly in Puerto Madryn charged us more than our hostelworld reserved price, and had a terrible kitchen. We actually used our camping dishes because they had no bowls!

And Hostel Granados in Buenos Aires - might be worth mentioning that the place is over two bars. Not even good ones, and way overpriced. We hung a sleeping bag over the window to block out the light and slept with earplugs!

So the moral of the story is to get recommendations from other travelers as much as possible. And only reserve rooms if you really need to...