In the morning I felt too sick to go on the hike along Lago Grey, but Julie went and saw a woodpecker. They hiked across one of the moraines in front of the lake and it was windy, but the rain stopped shortly after they started walking. Afterwards they hiked a little way up the hill to a lookout.
At noon we got box lunches to eat while riding the bus to a hike. While Torres del Paine is an amazing National Park, there are logistical problems to visiting it: there are only a few gravel roads to access a large area, and there are only one or two hotels and a few camping areas in or near the Park. This meant every activity from our Hotel Lago Grey base involved a bus ride of at least one bumpy hour. Fortunately the scenery there is fantastic, and we saw some wildlife from the bus as well.
The bus took us to a cafeteria and ferry base at the end of Lago Pehoe. From there we hiked first to a waterfall, then to a view of Los Cuernos (the horns) mountain, about two miles overall. The wind was crazy strong in a few places, sometimes making it difficult to stand up, but fortunately the wind would lessen as soon as you turned a corner or got below the crest of a hill. We saw a very relaxed guanaco grazing near the start of the trail.
Then we got to the waterfall overlook.
About a decade earlier there had been a forest fire several miles away, but with the wind being so strong the fire whipped through a large part of the Park before anything could be done about it. Only a few trees in this area survived.
The trail ends with this view.
Once back in the bus we stopped for photos at a bridge on the way back to the hotel because the clouds were clearing and the mountain tops were being revealed more.
Back at the hotel Julie and I walked down to the beach and walked around looking for birds but did not have much luck, maybe because it was so windy. The late afternoon light was beautiful on the mountains, though.
We gathered in the hotel bar before dinner to have a toast to our last night in Torres del Paine N.P. with some Pisco Sours, then our lamb dinner at the hotel restaurant came with Calafate Sours.
Between the drinks and the sinus issues I was having I was really tired at the end of the day.