We woke up the next morning, knowing that we would have to carry our large backpacks with us on this final hike of our Patagonia trek to Glaciar Grey. Except we didn’t know it would be a hike, per se, we thought it’d be a pretty flat walk. Boy were we very, very wrong. Keep in mind: my pack weighed about half my weight so trying to climb uphill, against the wind, while trying to keep my balance proved to be quite a difficult task. Four hours later we arrived at another Refugio and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see an end-point in my life. I had thought that nothing could be harder than the hikes of the previous two days but, yet again, I was wrong. By the time we reached the Refugio my shoulders, lower back, hips, knees, and ankles were all throbbing so I was thrilled when I finally got to drop that pack. And had no desire to pick it up ever again…
We had a few minutes of downtime before taking off to go sea kayaking near Glaciar Grey. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about sea kayaking as I’m not the world’s most coordinated person, but it turned out to be amazing. Everyone took out double kayaks and we were taught safety information for if we capsized….and I knew that that was likely to happen to us. We left the land and instantaneously crashed directly into an iceberg, but we kept on paddling. Then the wind picked up and dad had trouble maneuvering the kayak with the foot pedals – we pressed to go right and went left, pressed to go left and we went right, so we were getting yelled at as we were somehow the only people that couldn’t get the hang of it and we were being pulled out farther into the lake by the wind. Eventually we got the hang of it and, as per usual, we were the laughing stock. Being able to get up so close to ginormous icebergs really was magnificent. We kept on paddling against the wind, finally syncing up and going in the right direction, and next thing we knew Glaciar Grey appeared right before our little kayaks. We gasped. The sight was amazing, and it was something most people won’t ever have the opportunity to experience, which is a shame. We used the wind to our advantage to get back to the beach – so much easier, we barely had to paddle. We all shared some hot chocolate to warm up from the freezing temperatures of glacial water (zero degrees Celsius) and were excited to get back to the Refugio with Swoop Patagonia to relax after an absolutely physically and mentally exhausting day.
