After 3 days of walking and mixed nights sleep I was not in the best of moods for today's short walk to Glacier Grey, as with all walks in Patagonia it was uphill through a very picturesque valley. With no can of coke to hand it took about an hour to wake up and start walking at more than a snails pace.
The amazing views manged to wake me up
After about 2 hours we arrived at the viewpoint overlooking the glacier, although the face wasn't as impressive as the Perito Moreno Glacier, the ice field behind it was vast. The southern Patagonian Ice field is the 3rd largest reserve of water in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. Seeing various parts of this ice field over the last few weeks, most of which is receding rapidly, really brought home the effect of climate change. The sheer size of the ice field and the rate at which it is melting make it difficult to believe that mankind can do anything now to alter the course we are on.
View of Glacier Grey
Close up view of Glacier Grey
After catching the boat back across Lago Pehoe and then a short bus ride (2 hours is a short ride over here) we caught the bus south again for about 4 hours to Punta Arenas.
Being New Years Eve we were keen to find somewhere to party hard all night, boy where we in for a shock. The town was deserted, apparently we should have been in Brazil as the Argies and Chile´s like to celebrate New Years Eve at home with the family, even the English / Irish bar in the town was closed. WHHHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As we searched for anywhere that was open the drizzle turned to rain and we concluded that at this point a McDonalds would be a great place to spend New Year. About to give up and return to our hotel we glimpsed a light through the rain, it was a furniture shop. Hoverer across the road there was an open restaurant and a pretty decent one too ;-) After a great 4 course meal and quite a bit of champagne we saw New Years in with all the other travellers in the restaurant.
We were even treated to fireworks to music in the bay, ship fog horns and a couple of flares
Highlights: Finding somewhere for New Years
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