Man, the trick nobody mentions is your card issuer's dispute portal, not the hostel. I skip calling and emailing the place and go straight to my bank's app, open a dispute, and upload the listing's cancellation policy plus my cancel confirmation. Banks have rules where the merchant has a set number of days to answer the claim or you win by default. Hostels hate that because it costs them a fee on top of the refund. Last time I did this on a 30 euro room in Porto, the money was back in 4 days.

Small thing but the Park Service doesn't actually say leave no trace for the whole Lost Coast. That's mostly a slogan from outdoor groups. The real rules there are about staying on the trail and not messing with stuff, and they do say don't build new cairns. But here's where it gets murky. Cairns on routes like that beach are often historic. Some of those piles are a hundred years old, put there by ranchers or the original trail crews. Adding your own rock to an old one is fine if it needs a top-off. The problem is people building brand new ones where none ever existed. That's the part that bugs me. It tells the next person there's a route when there isn't. So my rule is simple. Fix an old cairn, never start a new one. If you need one to find your way, that's a sign you shouldn't be out there without a map.