For the past three weeks or so, the Q’oñi Wasi hostel in Puno, Peru has been my home away from home.

The first night I was here all the private rooms were booked up, so they placed me in a large dorm room on the third story that had five beds in it. Luckily, I had the entire room to myself. I didn’t get any photos of that bedroom, but I did take the following two photographs from the room’s two bedroom windows.

The following day they moved me into my own private room (see the photo at the top of this post) and I’ve remained in that room ever since.

Below is the entrance to the hostel and the doorman who would let me in and out of the hostel several times per day.

After coming into the entrance of the hostel, I would then march up a small flight of stairs and walk through the computer room. This area was often times filled with travelers from all over the world as they checked their emails, updated their Facebook statuses and posted photographs and stories to their blogs.

To the left of the computers is the kitchen. To the right are a number of small tables where you can sit and eat, work on your laptop or read a book. And further to the right is an Anne Frank-ish staircase that leads up to the rooms on the second, third and fourth stories. The door on the right-side of the photograph below is the door I would walk through in order to get to my private room on the second story.

After walking through the computer room, I would enter a small courtyard and then enter through another door into what seemed to be a totally different building. There was a small living room area that I’d walk through here before climbing a twisted set of stairs leading up to my room.

Room 203 was my home. The photo is dark because the lights get turned off during the day so as to conserve energy.

And you already saw the inside of my room. See the first photo at the top of this post.

My room was perfect for my needs. It cost 25 Soles per night (about $9 USD), had wireless Internet (the fastest I’ve had in Peru thus far – but for some reason the Internet would shut off every night somewhere between 7 and 11 PM), and the room had it’s own private bath.

Unfortunately, the door leading from the bedroom to the bathroom was only about 4.5 feet tall, so it was quite common for me to slam my head into the door as I attempted to pass through it.

And worst of all, operating the shower was a nightmare. Getting hot water to come out of the faucet was as difficult as cracking a safe. Three turns to the left. Two to the right. And then one microscopic turn to the left. And if you did that just right and you got lucky, you got hot water. The rest of the time, the water was cold, cold, cold.

My favorite part of my room in the Q’oñi Wasi hostel, however, was the sunroof. This plastic garden shed type of roof material was the only thing separating me from the elements… and because it rained every single day I was in Peru, I enjoyed listening to the rain splatter on the sheeting above me. At times the rain was so hard that I couldn’t even hear myself think. Stuck in my little room, it sounded as though I were trapped inside a coffin and there were a thousands people on the outside of my little wooden box, banging their hands on top of me as hard as they possibly could.

All in all, the Q’oñi Wasi was a great little place. The people running the place were super nice about letting me stay here for so long (especially since most people only stay here for a couple nights – just long enough to go and see the floating islands). The place was inexpensive, centrally located, and if I were to ever come back to Puno, Peru, I’d gladly stay at the Q’oñi Wasi again.