Latitude 55°58′ S: Rounding Cape Horn!

January 25, 2010
Day 9
Rounding Cape Horn

Mile 1086

This morning I needed no encouragement to get up early. This was going to be a day to remember.

We left Ushuaia the night before, passed the Chilean port town of Puerto Williams an hour later. Despite what Ushuia says, Puerto Williams is truly the southern most community in the world.

We were on Deck 12 early to stake out prime viewing spots. Today we´d round Cape Horn: this would be the absolute highlight of an already extraordinary journey.

¨Mystified¨is the word Genda used, and she was right. I´d seen fjords before, glaciers and dramatic mountains, but I´d never rounded the southernmost tip of the world. This was going to be great.

It was the 5th week of summer, but a frigid south wind pelted us, pinging bits of sleet against our windbreakers. Snow flurries raced past us on the sharp snap of wind.

We´d been sailing around the western end of Tierra del Fuego. This was a brittle world of half drowned mountain summits, a battleground where restless waters collided with the tops of the Andes which were here near the sea. Most of the land was bare and climbed from the water in massive curves and billows of glaciated stone. A few scrawny trees clung together in heroic clumps. The great swell of the Southern Ocean crashed on rocks, ledges and islets, flinging the shattered water high in the air.

We were wildly excited as the Cape came into view. It wasn´t much more than a remote and lonely rock, part of an isolated archipeligo in the Southern Ocean. But is was a fabled piece of rock, and... By now deck 12 was full and we were supremenly happy to have secured a prime viewing location. The wind was wild. Sleet alternately turned into a cold, light rain. The boat fought stiff winds. We were at the confluence of the Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic Ocean and the seas were rough. What a thrill!

We watched Cape Horn climb to its highest peak--1,331 feet--and at its triangular, pointed cliff that tumbled into the sea amidst a jagged horror of blunt rocks and upset waters.
Shortly after we had passed the Horn, four brilliant shafts of light, spotlights from Heaven, slashed through the murky skies and beamed down on the cold, gray open seas. It was as if God was blessing the countless souls whose lives had been lost in their attempts to round this perilous point.

For me, my journey down the full length of Chile had come to an end. It had been two weeks to the day that I´d crossed from Peru into the northern Chilean town of Arica. I´d travelled through the driest desert on earth, along magnificent Pacific coastline, then through the glorious fjords of Patagonian. I`d passed dramatic snow-mantled peaks and finally exited the country as we rounded Cape Horn. More then once I´d been overwhelmed to tears.

We lingered on deck for some time. It had all happened so fast. Whether it was a vapor of wind or the flinty reality of Cape Horn, the Patagonian Channels were behind us. I had accomplished my goal: a transit of the Chilean waterways, a brief look at Tierra del Fuego and a fleeting look at the fabled and awesome Cape Horn.

A few hours later hundreds of us gathered poolside to be baptised as "Honorary Fuegians."

"May the chill be with you," uttered the Captain, as he dumped a bucket of icy cold Fuegan water on our heads. It was all great fun.

It had been quite a start to the day and nothing more on this cruise could equal those magic moments, early on a snow/sleet-filled summer morning, when we rounded Caped Horn--the southern most point on Earth.