We luckily got to stay in refugios during our trek which provided us with full room and board - usually these ski lodge type places are fully booked well in advance during the high season. Description and stories below!
Grey - a few minutes walk to a great view of Glacier Grey.
When we heard about showers, we were excited to get a hot shower to warm up! The ones here were lukewarm at best and it was terribly cold in the lodge. I think I was colder and wetter after the shower than during our hike.
One of our trip tips was to arrive early for dinner and not to linger - the menu can change as supplies run low and dining space is limited. We didn't run into this problem at all since we were trekking during the end of the season when everything is cold. We were the only people having dinner besides the staff! And it's probable they gave us all the mashed potatoes they had left.
We roomed with an awesome Australian named Melanie. It was just the 3 of us in our 6 bunk room. Peter and I both slept on the bottom bunk near the window and Melanie slept on the other bottom bunk, also near the window. So, if you can imagine it, we were sleeping in a "L." Underneath the window is a set of wooden storage boxes where we were airing out our dirty socks and left a small bag of trail mix.
Peter and I are huddled around the fire stove when Melanie comes down to inform us that there is a mouse in our bag. We go up and just stare at our trashbag waiting for something to move. Nothing happened so we went to dinner.
During dinner, Melanie proceeds to tell her own story of when her house was infested with mice and how her carpet snake was either too lazy to do anything about it or there was too many it was overwhelmed. After dinner, we met a camper who said the mice had eaten through his tent to get at his food. With mice on our mind, we went to bed.
Around 1AM, we could hear the mouse scurrying across the wooden storage box and the crinkling of plastic. Peter got up and discovered that he had gotten into our trail mix. A little while later we heard more crinkling of plastic. It had run up the curtain onto the top bunk and was going for the rest of our snacks. Peter got up again and put all our stuff on the top bed of the empty set of bunks. Peter pretty much stayed up all night mouse proofing our food.
The next morning while we were getting ready to head out, Melanie informs us that the mouse is now in her bag! It had somehow gotten into her closed backpack that was hanging off the bed and chewed up her snack bag. There wasn't even any food in there. We took her backpack outside and dumped the mouse out. It was so fat. So fat.
Cuernos - nice and cozy.
We shared a room with a couple and 3 study abroad students from the States. Our room had triple bunks!
One of the students, Mike, felt the need to bring 3 bottles of Pisco on the trip instead of a sleeping bag. So we all sat around the dining area and had a lively Pisco fueled night. This is of course in preparation for our 12hr hike the next day.
Las Torres - right next to Hotel Las Torres making it extremely hard to find in the dark. Moderate sized refugio and the warmest of them all.
We had hiked 12hrs that day and all we wanted was a warm bed and some food in our bellies. It took has an extra 40min walking aimlessly around searching for this place. It didn't help that we only had headlamps for light and signs were scarce. We finally made it and graciously enough, the staff let us have dinner even though they had started to clean up.
Since the mouse ate all your snacks, you should have bbq it instead of letting it go!
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