Refugio El Chileno — Hotel in Torres del Paine

This is a stop over place on the way to Del Paine Base, where three giant mountain spikes with a huge glacier-fed lake in the front. This place is in the mid-point between the Base and the central, where your car can go no further and where is the only place you can park your car. It's an ideal place to stay overnight if you want to hike to the Base and not over extend yourself. The hikes from the central to Refugio Chileno and from Refugio Chileno to the Base are long and hard, over 8 km in total, with the second part especially difficult. So if you are not young and fit(like we are), or don't want to overextend yourself, it's nice to stay here for two nights. However, there are people who hike the entire distance from the central to the base (Hotel Las Torres) and back in one day! If you can do this then your can save yourself a lot of money and hassle, since this place is pretty rudimentary. Some staff there in the front desk are more interested in working on her laptop than helping answer any questions. The checking staff are nice, friendly and very willing to help but we found the staff working in the restaurant are less friendly - one of the waiters even said "no English here" - a bit rude considering a lot of people are visiting from English speaking countries. The scenery along the hiking trails are breathtaking. Note if you bring a water filtration bottle, there's almost no mountain stream between central and Refugio Chileno, while there are many streams between Refugio Chileno and the Base. Finding a room in the dormitory style building is difficult and you often have to reserve 6 months ahead of time. We started reserve 4 months ahead and we could only find an outdoor tent. Note these tents are low tents inside of which you can't stand up. The check-in guy will set the tent for you after your check-in and it's a hard work(don't forget to leave generous tips) requiring many trips for supplies from the storage room. These tents are set on a wooden platform and located on a slope. The tent we slept in was located on a steep slope and difficult to get to. There is no lights in the camp site, so hiking up and down at the night is difficult and dangerous. There are showers and restrooms in the complex but it's not heated, also you have to limit your shower to within 5 minutes. No toilet papers are allowed inside the toilet; so you wipe yourself and place it inside a nearby bin. They don't allow you to carry backpacks inside the restaurant eating area; you must leave your backpacks, shoes and your hiking sticks in the foyer area on the ground, which is dirty. They don't keep the floor clean in the eating area also, so you'd better bring yourself a pair of slippers with you, or otherwise your socks would be very dirty, full of small gravels and dirt. Note also there is no laundry facility here. On the second day we were there, they built a square shoulder-height table in the foyer corner, but still won't allow people to leave their small backpacks, jackets on the table. Don't know why they built the table, since it occupied a large corner where shoes, backpacks and hiking sticks would usually go. We stayed in many Refugios inside the Park this place is by far the least desirable. Note the dinner is served between 7 and 9pm and you sit together with your fellow hikers on a long bench seat, with an extended picnic table. You can not choose whom you sit with; they fill up a table from the people in the line before start seating a new one. You also need to be there during the dinner time or otherwise you won't have a dinner. The dinner must be specified when you book the room/tent on...

I paid $190 for a premium campsite. When I arrived they gave me a tent number that didn’t exist, so I wandered around the tents exhausted and eventually went to find a staff member who took me to what I suspect is a staff tent that was on the ground - he moved his own sleeping bag out of it before telling me it was mine. I'm find with a regular tent on the ground, but not when I've paid the same price as the premium tent.||Later that night after dinner I discovered that the sleeping bags inside my tent had been removed by someone, and I had to go ask for replacement sleeping bags. This was not fun when I was trying to get to sleep to wake up for sunrise, and I was also disturbed that someone, likely a staff member, clearly entered my tent with all my personal belongings in it. I had my tag with my name on it outside, so there should have been no confusion that there was a guest staying inside.||There was absolutely no explanation from the staff for either of these things.||I also met a couple campers who were on the last day of their 4-day trek and expected to be able to find SOME kind of food but they were told that dinner was booked and all the a la carte items were sold out so the only thing they could eat were the overpriced chips and cookies for sale. How can you be the only refugio at the most important point in the trek and not even offer some bread when you know people have been trekking for days and need to eat??||The only place to cook is on a tiny folding table in the corner of the dining room which can fit maybe 3 people, there is no place for trash and we can only wash dishes from the drinking tap outside. The bathrooms were also the dirtiest I encountered on the trek.||It's actually comical that this refugio is one of the most expensive on the trek. Shame on this company for thinking they can charge that much money and be so careless about...

I paid $190 for a premium campsite. When I arrived they gave me a tent number that didn’t exist, so I wandered around the tents exhausted and eventually went to find a staff member who took me to what I suspect is a staff tent that was on the ground - he moved his own sleeping bag out of it before telling me it was mine. I'm find with a regular tent on the ground, but not when I've paid the same price as the premium tent.||Later that night after dinner I discovered that the sleeping bags inside my tent had been removed by someone, and I had to go ask for replacement sleeping bags. This was not fun when I was trying to get to sleep to wake up for sunrise, and I was also disturbed that someone, likely a staff member, clearly entered my tent with all my personal belongings in it. I had my tag with my name on it outside, so there should have been no confusion that there was a guest staying inside.||There was absolutely no explanation from the staff for either of these things.||I also met a couple campers who were on the last day of their 4-day trek and expected to be able to find SOME kind of food but they were told that dinner was booked and all the a la carte items were sold out so the only thing they could eat were the overpriced chips and cookies for sale. How can you be the only refugio at the most important point in the trek and not even offer some bread when you know people have been trekking for days and need to eat??||The only place to cook is on a tiny folding table in the corner of the dining room which can fit maybe 3 people, there is no place for trash and we can only wash dishes from the drinking tap outside. The bathrooms were also the dirtiest I encountered on the trek.||It's actually comical that this refugio is one of the most expensive on the trek. Shame on this company for thinking they can charge that much money and be so careless about...