Hilo Tropical Gardens

The owner informed me that this hostel has closed :(

Want to have an authentic «Hawaiin» stay? This is it! I camped out (had my own tent) for only $ 15! I slept in the «jungle» surrounded by frogs, geckos, birds, hogs and the cutest cat that Trish refers to Evil… But he was so sweet!
They have washers, dryers, communal kitchen and bathroom. If you forgot shampoo or bathing suit top there’s also a «Forgotten so it’s Free» section were you can find those items. Lights out by 10pm, but can leave a refundable deposit for a gate key if you wish to go out.
Trish and rest of the staff are the best! I plan on going back and staying there… You should too!

We stayed in the Pineapple room: two beds, private room, uses the same shared bathroom as the rest of the house.
The beds felt a little old at first, but were actually perfectly comfortable. Similarly the bathroom seemed a little dingy, but turned out to be just fine (a little worn, but clean and functional).
As others have said: Friendly staff, beautiful grounds, free WiFi (pretty fast, for us: enough to download some TV from iTunes for the plane ride out), and had an opening when nobody else did.

i send all my friends here, close to the beach, beautiful garden… buses to take you anywhere… and its a safe place

Noisy place, but what a cacophony of frogs and wildlife! Great garden behind the building and a great place to wander in the morning and afternoon.
The attached convenience store and ice cream shop made it a perfect home base for any Hilo-​based trips.
Great location just outside Hilo and close to the tide pools at the end of the road.
Simple basic private rooms with shared baths. No A/​C, and slow Wifi-​enough for emails and looking things up.
Trish and Tracy were exemplary hosts-​definitely returning again. They were a great source of local eatery info.

Before I moved here, I have always wanted to check this place out. Like Brian said, it’s behind an ice cream store! I finally decided to go in to check out their campgrounds. When I first opened the door (they lock this at 10:00 PM so there is security there), I was shocked by how pretty the grounds were! If you think the gardens and park on Banyan is gorgeous, wait until you see the grounds here. They really take great care of landscaping the place. I was not expecting that when I first arrived! A worker there was nice enough to show me a dorm, a private room, and showed me how the camping works. If you spend a week or more there it’s $ 12.50 a night!
The dorm is a traditional dorm and I think there were 4 single beds in each one in a small room. They have single sex dorms and coed dorms (I will only do single sex dorms after sharing a coed one with a bunch of smelly Dutch guys who kept farting at night). The private rooms I bet are nicer than the hotels on Banyan Drive but that isn’t saying much since those hotels are more or less really motels. I don’t think the room had a T.V. though which could suck at night as things in Hilo towards the evening die down. The campgrounds were big enough for very large tents. Most of the people there actually had the huge ones. I didn’t see any traditional small tents.
They are spaced apart too so you can have privacy. Love the fact that they have quiet hours at 10:00 PM.
I am a high maintenance female from Southern California and have always hated camping (in fairness, I did «real camping» in a cheap small tent and had no mattress pad only using a sleeping bag), but I feel I could do it here like how everyone else seemed to do it– You get a huge tent, stick an air mattress in it, have a ton of space for everything else! It’s like a tree house but on the floor :)
I would love to stay here one day. If I had checked this place out before I moved here I would easily have stayed here.

Great, friendly staff, amazing gardens, convenience store and ice cream store right up front. What more could you want? :0)