TOFINO, B.C. -- Some people say Tofino's Hostelling International hostel, Whalers on the Point Guesthouse, is more like a resort hotel than a hostel. Um, I wouldn't go nearly that far, but it's a pretty nice, lodgelike building, on the waterfront within a few minutes' walk of everything in town.

It won an award for "Best Canadian Hostel" in 2001, but a lot of backpacks have been dragged up the stairs since then. The wear and tear shows.

There's more than one hostel in Tofino, but only
Whalers on the Point is affiliated with
Hostelling International, the leader in the field.

Dorm beds are $30 a night, a little more than most hostels. If you want a private room with an extra bed, you really pay Tofino prices (meaning "we're on the edge of the world, at the end of a long, winding road, and you're going to pay for it"). Our room with a double bed topped by a single bunkbed was $95 a night, which even in Canadian dollars is skittering toward the cliff edge of the "ultra budget" category that hostels are supposed to anchor.

But the lodge has lots of pretty wood (floors, stairs, doors), with a river rock fireplace dividing the dining area and lounge, both with a Clayoquot Sound view impeded only by the frequent mist, rain or fog (no extra charge, courtesy of Mum Nature, eh?).

On the plus side: The shared bathrooms, while not completely private, do have private dressing areas for each shower stall. There's a gas barbecue on the patio, and there's a sauna (though we never saw it turned on). They get a gold star for providing a reading light clipped to the bed, a first for hostels we've patronized.

The dining room at the hostel looks out on Clayoquot Sound.

The lodge is BIG, which is one of its downfalls. When running close to full in this peak season, guests mobbed the kitchen at meal time. Refrigerators were crammed so full of guests' Sharpie-marked food containers that there was barely space for one more carton of organic yogurt.

And the place seemed woefully understaffed. Unlike the Victoria hostel with its friendly and helpful crew at the front desk, Tofino seemed to operate with one harried person staffing the office. So to get even the simplest question answered ("Do you provide towels?") (yes, but you have to pay a buck) could mean a 10-minute wait while others checked in or out. Too bad if the phone rang when you got to the front of the line.

While we were there, it was a bit of a party palace, which is fine if that's what you're after. Tofino on a sunny Friday evening felt like a good place to party. Beer-drinking games among the young crowd on the patio outside our window got pretty rowdy, though, and having the designated smoking area just below the only opening windows for a lot of guest rooms is a lousy idea. If you're seeking quiet (and fresher air), keep looking. The Long Beach Lodge Resort, down the highway a few miles, has rooms starting at $309 in July.

That's just one of several newer, high-dollar accommodations that have made Tofino less of a rustic old fishing village and more of an expensive resort town catering to kayakers, surfers and beach lovers from around the world.