23rd January 2015 – Torres del Paine to Punta Arenas

Today we had a really early start, we drove out of the hotel car park at 5:00 am, so the alarm went off at 4:30, the hotel gave us a packed breakfast and we hit the dirt road in the dark.  The early start was certainly worth it as we saw the sunrise over the mountains, it was magnificent.  The clouds & snow glowed pink – my colour!We were on the way to Glacier Gray and we had to pick up our tickets at 7am for a departure on the boat at 8am across the lake.  After visiting Perito Moreno 2 days ago we thought it might be a waste of time, but we were very wrong.  The Glacier at Lago Gray was fantastic, as we approached the face the temperature dropped and with the wind chill factor it was extremely cold.  There were icebergs floating around the lake which had broken off the glacier.  The colour of the ice of the glacier was intense blue it was just beautiful and well worth the early rise to see.     We then had quite a long drive into Punta Arenas for our overnight stop.  In total today we covered about 350km on both dirt and sealed roads.  The trip after the glacier visit was through the open desert dropping down to the water of the Magellan Straights.  When we arrived at Punta Arenas we filled up with fuel and pulled up to the pumps behind a black MG3, the driver was really pleased to see other MG’s and took a few photo’s of us, even though we were covered in dirt.Punta Arenas is a lively city, we wandered through the streets watching street performers and looking at all the lovely buildings.  We went down to the water front for a meal of hake in one of the many restaurants.