Icebergs And Kayaks January 12th

Early alarm at 6 am as we had a full day planned. We were ready to go because in spite of it’s unique configuration our yurt (sorry, geo dome) proved to be very comfortable and we both got a great nights sleep even with the window open and the temperature just above zero C (32F).

We traversed a large section of the park in our little bus and my teeth are still rattling. Two hours of non stop washboard gravel road later we reached the south shore of Greys Lake. This bumping lurching travel has quickly been labeled the Patagonia massage.

Along the way we climbed and descended some serious elevation changes all while the Paine mountains towered above us. Sadly the clouds never really came off the mountain tops. There are dozens of lakes big and small around every turn so good photo opps.

At Greys Lake we walked for 25 minutes across a dried river bed/lake to a boat for a 3 hour tour of the lake, icebergs and glaciers.

It was incredibly windy and cold on the open decks of the boat as the glacier created its own weather pattern. Overall, simply wow.

Then it was off to kayak school for both lessons on how to get into a very high end dry suit and paddling a tandem sea kayak using foot peddles for the rudder. The former, comical. The latter, intimidating.

Facing a very strong current, Mo and I pushed off into the howling wind (and immediately ran aground on an unseen sandbar). Our attempts to get up close to some icebergs were thwarted by the strong wind and waves (although Doug and Louise did get across to a couple of small ones). Thus we headed back to the mouth of the Grey River and paddled/floated 15 kms.

Our suits worked brilliantly and no one capsized so it was a great time.

We had unexpectedly warm sunny weather but as climbed back on the bus it started to rain. Pity the hikers and cyclists still out there. Two hours of more teeth rattling gravel road and we got back to camp 13 hours after leaving this morning. Drinks, dinner, rinse and repeat tomorrow albeit with a different adventure somewhere else in the park.