Patagonia Travellers´Hostel — Hotel in El Chaltén

My friend and I booked the Patagonia Travellers' Hostel for four nights on a trip to El Chalten. Location-wise, it's great. Unfortunately, I think the overall experience here may depend heavily on what room you get. We had booked a room with a private bathroom and upon checking in (it was Room 11), we found quite a bit of mold on the walls both in the room and bathroom. While grossed out, we are also millennial people-pleasers, and figured that, well, it couldn't be THAT bad if they are renting this room out and it IS a hostel, so maybe this is just expected... so we didn't say anything and just decided to suck it up. ||Unfortunately, my friend got pretty sick and it coincided with moving into the moldy room. It ended up affecting our trip as she wasn't well enough to do all of the big hikes we had hoped to do. We did ask to swap rooms after a couple days and were told that Room 11 apparently has a WELL KNOWN mold issue and management just sort of shrugged it off like it wasn't a big deal. They moved us into a new room but didn't offer any further fix like a partial refund or anything like that. Upon entering the new room we got, the air felt and smelled cleaner and my friend's symptoms even subsided a bit, so clearly the mold in the previous room had been a problem.||The new room had no mold and was much cleaner on the whole. Had we been in that new room the whole time, I'd probably be rating this place much higher and would have said it was an overall pleasant experience... but our visit was sort of ruined by the mold room.||It's somewhat shocking to me that management would know about a potential health issue like mold and not do anything to fix it and continue to rent the room out to guests. Again, I want to stress that when we went to ask about the issue, management said they knew that room has issues and tried to even explain why that room gets particularly moldy. I don't care if you're a budget hostel - if you KNOW there's an existing issue like mold, it's incredibly unprofessional and, honestly, crooked, to rent that room out without so much as letting customers know about the issue ahead of time. ||So, overall, I'd say be careful here. Obviously we didn't come into it expecting five-star accommodations, but we rented here BECAUSE the overall rating was good and cleanliness was mentioned by many reviews. I do wish we had advocated for ourselves earlier in the stay after my friend first began to feel unwell, but we shouldn't have ever had to do that because they should not have been renting out a room they KNOW has large amounts of mold. So just because this is a budget hostel, please speak your mind if you get into a room and find it moldy or otherwise dirty. And if they try to put you in...

Pro's: Heated rooms, spacious common areas, clean and tidy, lamp at the bed side and takes card payments (when the internet works) Cons: Paper thin bedroom walls that move if pressed (old house side), small beds (child size), small kitchen with one fridge for over 40 guests, barely any Wi-Fi if it works at all.

El Chalten is such a beautiful place with lots to see and this large and recently extended hostel was a disappointment in all honesty. It looks very modern and impressive upon arrival, the newer development built around 5 years ago is now the entrance and reception. The smaller side which is the original house has several rooms, a few bathrooms, the small kitchen and eating area. Our room was no.5, a twin room upstairs in the old side. A small room with 2 small single beds and just enough room for our bags and a thin walkway down the middle. Typical of many hostels in Patagonia, usually small and cramped to maximise profit. There was a shared single male and shared female bathroom upstairs each with one toilet and a shower serving 4 rooms of up to 12 people. The one radiator in the bedroom provided plenty of heat and we were never cold in the room. They provided towels and sachets of shampoo and conditioner with a small bar of soap. We stayed in early April which is the shoulder season and paid a reduced price of 660 ($33USD) pesos per night for the room, usually 800 pesos ($40USD). The private rooms with bathroom in the new side were 1200 pesos ($60USD) Yes its Patagonia, yes it is a tourist destination but still overpriced for what you get. The thin walls and small bed did not aid in getting rest and relaxation in between the long and active days. The common spaces were clean and provided seating in the reception area closest to the Wi-Fi router, tv room and eating area. The is also a small bar area. The Wi-Fi only seemed to be working just enough for the basics if you were very close to the router, not obsessed with being online but did need it a couple of times. The girl at reception was really nice, friendly and helpful, always happy to help and answer questions, she was one of the businesses best attributes. The hiking trails arent too far away from this place which is also about 15 minutes walk from the bus terminal. I tried to pay by visa card the night before we left as the internet is temperamental, it failed 3 times so we had to try in the morning before we left for the bus terminal,...

I stayed here with my friend on our bucket-list trip to Patagonia. While the location was excellent and was in very close proximity to restaurants and trailheads, I was mortified to find our room was completely infested with black mold. This was after a third night of hardly any sleep since I was so unbelievably ill, my illness progressing to the point where my friend couldn’t tell if I was breathing while in a light sleep; she said I was making choking and gargling sounds. Once we started looking, we found black mold absolutely everywhere in our room. I was in tears as I went to the front desk to tell them, to which I was SHOCKED when they brought out the manager and she proceeded to explain why the room gets so moldy. I am horribly allergic to mold, and black mold can pose SO MANY LASTING HEALTH RISKS. They knowingly rented this room to us (Room 11) despite knowing about the black mold. We were moved to a different room for the final night of our stay, but I would question the entire building since my symptoms still didn’t improve as much and I still barely slept that night. I messaged them about this issue and asked for at least a partial refund, to which they refused.

We traveled over 7000 miles to get here, it took several days, and I was too ill to do most of the big hikes we were so excited to do. This was the biggest disappointment of all and I was devastated, as was my friend.

I don’t like ever leaving negative reviews, but this was a horribly handled situation and I’m still in shock that they would continue to rent out this room, and offer us no refund; black mold can live in your system for months and even years, and cause so many health problems. I’m scared of what this experience could do to me long-term, and I would highly advise avoiding this place at all costs. The only reason I give it 2 stars is because they were able to move us to a different room so quickly after we discovered the mold, but that’s it. On second note…the breakfast was pretty awful, there were flies all over the room-temperature deli meats...