YHA Waitomo is underwhelming at its best.

Where to begin?

1) Hostel receptionist was one of the rudest people we have ever encountered in our lives. Clearly hates her job, extremely unhelpful, and made us feel like we were asking the world of her after simple questions like, "Where can one get a bite to eat around here?". She was extremely pissed off when we presented our coupons for a free stay after getting our YHA NZ memberships, and said it was a really annoying thing to change on the computer because we had already booked online. Then she scolded us for arriving at the hostel 'ridiculously early' (~10am, because we took the only available bus from Rotorua), and told us to go sit on some couches for a while. Later, we bought a day's internet pass for $10, only to find that our laptop could not connect to the wifi network. We used the hostel computer instead, and when it started charging us $1/15 min we asked her what was going on and she told us the $10 day pass was only for the wifi network (which didn't work), and that not only would the $10 buy us only 2 hours on the computer, but we had to use it all in one session. When I asked about logging off and getting a refund because we didn't want to spend 2 hours on the computer right when we arrived, she said it was our fault and we should just deal with it. Very, very unpleasant.

2) The kitchen was the most disgusting thing we'd ever seen. The counters were dirty and wet with bugs crawling all over them, dirty dishes were strewn about, covered in flies, and the garbage was overflowing to boot. Gross.

And we have only been here for a few hours (sitting on the computer, trying to make use of the ridiculous $10 we just spent). This hostel is NOT recommended! Stay at the Rotorua YHA, which is fantastic, and come out here for a daytrip to see the caves. Someone should take that gumtree branch out of the receptionist's ass.

Reviewed over 3 years ago and experienced in February 2012