W Trek Day 1 - Paine Grande to Grey

We needed to be at the bus station at 7am for our bus to take us to the boat at Pudeto, which in turn would take us across Lago Pehoe to camping Paine Grande in the national park Torres del Paine. It was raining quite a bit but we knew the weather was predicted to get better in the afternoon. On the way to the dock the axle/wheel/something on our bus broke. After some opportunistic and noisy attempts by the bus driver to fix it (by trying to drive back and forth about 10 times which only made it sound worse), we were thankfully allowed to move into one of the other busses that drove by. Yay mass tourism! Finally arriving at the Pudeto dock together with another 80-something hopefuls, we saw the boat arriving and unload the people who came back from the park. Surprisingly there were a handful of suitcases being dragged off. Also a lot of people had big heavy-looking sleeping bags that they didn't mind getting wet in the rain. Interesting choices, we thought, but only later we realised why this wasn't even so unusual.

When the boat arrived it stopped raining! What amazed us the most was the amount of rental tents set up, which gave it a very corporate feel. It didn't look like there were many people who brought there own tents like we did. It was also possible to rent practically any other gear you might need for some nice high prices. And buy all the food you wanted as well, like 500gr uncooked pasta for 5 euros. The shop even had fresh food and we saw many people with bought lunchboxes from the camping owners. What also felt contradictory was that there were signs all over the campsite that any trash should be taken with you, yet there were trashcans as well. We figured it had to do with day tourists, but it still felt like it made little sense.

We ate a quick bread lunch in the spacious kitchen area and then started the hike towards camping Grey. The trail was leading through a nice valley and later climbed up to a very nice view of a lake. There were even some icebergs floating that must have travelled all the way from the end of the Grey glacier which was were our camping for this night was located. The 11km trail estimated to need 3.5 hours took us 4.5 hours including some small resting and view-enjoying breaks and we arrived at the Grey camping at 17:30. Again, lots of corporate tents which meant that it was difficult to find good tent spots and reminded us a bit of a camping full of stacaravans/mobile homes. We did not like that too much but in the forest in the back of the camping grounds we found some nice spots joining other hikers with their own tents. We had dinner in the kitchen area, the only area where gascookers are allowed. This is due to a lot of forest fires in the past and the traces of that are still very visible in places. There was a viewing point nearby of the glacier and glacier lake, Daniel and Susanne couldn't resist to take a look and it turned out very cool. But we also had to sleep as we had a long day of hiking ahead of us.Read more