We set off on day 5 with a little rain around, which wasn't too much of an issue, but it was insanely windy. As we walked along the base of the W, we saw lots more rainbows and walked through areas where all the trees had lost their leaves, leaving behind bare black and white bark.

We reached Refugio Paine Grande, where most of our fellow trekkers had stayed the night before, and stopped in for some lunch inside their huge dining room out of the wind. A hot chocolate went down a treat with our pre-packed lunches.

Then we set off up the western side of the W, alongside Lago Grey. We were heading for Refugio Grey, near the base of the Grey Glacier, a further 11kms. It was miserable. We were walking head on into strong winds. The wind was such that you could lean all your weight forward as you walked and stay upright.

As we trudged along we barely looked up at the what was around us, though fortunately in a bit of a gully we weren't missing much. Then around half way we hit the lakes edge where we got our first view of the glacier. The face of the glacier splits around an island, meeting the glacial lake in two big faces.

A few icebergs floated in the lake, but other than a quick photo at a few lookout points we didn't stop much to take things in, preferring to just get to the refuge and out of the weather.

When we arrived we found Tom and Mandi and a few others we had met earlier in the trek. They had all walked only a short distance so had arrived a few hours ahead of us. We fortunately made it just before quite a serious downpour of rain which was good timing!

We spent the afternoon teaching Tom and Mandi how to play 500 and getting stuck into some cheap wine ("Gato") which cost around $6 a litre from the shop at the campsite next door. We started with 2 boxes which we got through in no time before deciding to go and watch the sunset at a nearby lookout point. Fortunately the wind had almost completely stopped by this stage.

A few of us ran off to check out the sunset, grabbing more wine on the way of course. We discovered upon arrived there was far to much cloud still to have any kind of sunset effect on the glacier but we had fun mucking around anyway.

Back in the refuge we managed to knock off some more wine over more cards, then more wine over dinner, then just more wine for the sake of it. We were all pretty proud of our efforts on the trek and being our last night we felt we deserved it. The Gato had got us.