Refugio Grey — Attraction in Torres del Paine

What an overall disappointing experience. We carried all our own food and gear for hiking the O trek, however we decided that after a very long day hiking the pass, we would probably like a bigger meal, so we prebooked the buffet for $40 USD per person. Given the price, I pictured a very nice buffet with unlimited access to food. This was very wrong. The food itself was hardly edible, 2 soup options, both had no flavor. You were only allowed one meat option and one trip through the buffet, I had the chicken that tasted like a salt block. There was some spaghetti noodles but no sauce of any type, black beans, rice, salad and canned vegetables that were basically gone by the time we got through the line. Some juice, jello, and other desserts that were also already gone. People that booked directly at the Refugio paid significantly less (like $23ish I believe)… though still a ridiculous price for what was offered. I thought prebooking was required (and also should be less since they have the knowledge and number counts to allow for the right amount of food). You could buy pizza and hamburgers for under $20 which were much better tasting and a larger quantity of food. ||Other than the terrible food buffet, grey is a giant campsite, if you brought your own tent—you have a spot of land just large enough to fit your tent and basically on top of your next neighbor—located a long walk to the bathrooms. After hiking the O, meeting up with the W and mass amount of people here is overwhelming. The showers were nice and hot, more wall hooks and stools near the shower or something to set things on would be a nice addition. Grey has all other amenities, wi fi, charging location, a bar,...

The staff is nice and helpful and the refugio is one of the best within the National Park. Our experience however was far from great given the customer service. We needed to shorten our trip by one day given I injured myself during the W trek and, after making several attempts to speak to the manager and to the sales team, they were not able to refund any of the cost (200$ for two people which is not cheap at all if considering no meals are included) nor provide any extra service to compensate other than a couple of welcome drinks. To be fair we were warned that refund was normally not an option however most of the refugios will give you a voucher so you can use it to pay for food or extra things like internet. Sadly in this case they were not able even to offer a breakfast or anything like that that at least would have helped us not to leave with a bitter taste. It is shameful to see how much they are charging tourists in this national park (surely the costs of running the business in the nature are much higher but the margin they are getting in this refugio is massive) yet at the same time they are not willing even to offer the minimum level for customers for situations like the one we experience. Definitely will not come back and don’t recommend anyone to stay here (even sometimes you will have no...

We stayed in a refugio room with no bedding (brought our own sleeping bag).

Room - we had 4 people (2x bunk beds), but there were rooms of 6 too, quite small but there was space to put your bag and a shelf per bunk. Room allocation seemed arbitrary.

Bathrooms - shared, hot water. Bring shower shoes as they get quite gross. They are very old and not cleaned frequently enough. Recommend getting a shower as soon as you arrive to beat the rush.

Food - we had dinner and it was appalling. Buffet with mystery meat, basic salad, pasta worse than school canteen food. Our advice is to not have the dinner, instead at the bar you can order pizza or burgers (they had a deal for pizza + beer for 20-25k ARS) which looked much more appealing and cheaper. There is a well stocked mini market where you can buy instant noodles, tuna, pasta etc. The dinners at the Las Torres sites is infinitely better.

It is still 100% worth staying here as it is much smaller than the other refugios on the w trek, with a cosy and friendly atmosphere. It also allows you to hike past grey to the...