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Arnott's Lodge & Hiking Adventures
3 reviews for Arnott's Lodge & Hiking Adventures
Excellent for the budget traveller that is just going to sleep in the room and spend the rest of their time exploring the island.
My sister and I stayed here about 5 years ago. We took two of the tours - one hiking about 8 miles over lava and the Mauna Kea sunset tour. The tours were well run and also no frills.
Stay here if you get your kicks from the beautiful weather and nature and are just looking for a place to crash. Also, a good way to meet folks to make your experience more lively.
I went to the Big Island with the idea of being a dirty filthy hippie, living on a farm, eating the fruit that I picked, bathing in the springs down the road but still shitting in a toilet. I tried it for a night but once I realized you are required to get some sort of infection, like Staph or something, before you are a real hippie AND you have to change your name to something stoooopid like "Wave" or "Schmoo," I had to quit.
After a very long and fun adventure featuring two friends and two locs and their van and some wine coolers and a black sand nekked beach, my friends and I ended up at Arnott's. Oh my was this place paradise after waking up on a "farm" underneath a wasp's nest. Arnott's is a hostel in the true sense of the word. You can sleep in dorms, semi private rooms, or you can CAMP ON THE LAWN. yep. it will rain and ants will crawl up your pants, but it is cheap and, hey, it's Hawaii. There is a communal sitting/eating area with a T.V., outdoor showers, boys and girls kitchens, a lounge/movie watching area, bike rental...you get the idea. We were there long enough to make friends with the staff, which was kind of good (local tips and they can be fun to drink with) and kind of awful (if I hear that girl talk about Mana one more time...).
Overall, Arnott's was good to me and saved me from getting scabies on some dirty, pathetic excuse at farming and communal living in paradise.
At Arnott's, you get what you pay for.
This is probably the cheapest accommodation in Hilo, and they won't let you forget that. Anytime you ask for a service, if they don't offer it, they'll tell you it's how they keep their prices down. They're not rude about it, but it gets old.
We stayed in a semi-private room, which shares a bathroom with one other room. It was clean and comfortable -- perfect if you just need a place to sleep and shower. The staff was a mixed bag -- one guy was extremely friendly and helpful, two others seemed to have lost their sense of aloha.
Arnott's feels like a hostel, but they will not let you stay more than 7 days unless you make special arrangements.
It's pretty far -- 3 miles -- from downtown Hilo. They have bikes to rent for cheap, but it's not a fun ride from Arnott's to downtown -- you ride on a main highway through a light industrial zone, sharing the road with lots of semis moving at 50mph.
