Cape Horn
Cape Horn has a great mystique about it. The end of the world. Horrific storms. Graveyard to countless ships and sailors. There is a striking sculpture near the Cape, visible miles out to sea, to memorialize mariners who lost their lives trying to round the Horn. A Chilean family lives on the isolated, windswept island, collecting weather data.
It is also a place of great beauty, with severe cliffs upon which spectacular surf crashes, fueled by the west wind drift that makes the Drake Passage (for our benign crossing, renamed Drake Lake) so infamous. It is a meeting place between the Pacific and the Atlantic, between land and sea, between land birds and sea birds. It is the junction where we leave the open waters of the Drake and enter the protected Beagle Channel, the final leg of our adventure. It is green with trees, shrubs, grasses and wildflowers, which have been absent from our lives during the last week.
Our journey is coming to an end. Time can play odd tricks. Was it really just two weeks ago (and not a half of a lifetime) that we met in Buenos Aires? We have a huge new set of experiences to digest and integrate into our lives. How can a person not change after being in the company of albatrosses? Sitting amongst (and smelling) hundreds of thousands of penguins surely must alter our perceptions of our own importance. Cruising through ice, surrounded by glaciers and mountains leaves us speechless in trying to share with those who have not seen what we have seen, as well as without words to interpret the experience even to ourselves. Humpback whales breaching in the after dinner light cannot help but turn us into advocates for protecting the Southern Ocean.
Traveling expands our understanding and appreciation of our world, our fellow inhabitants (human and otherwise), and ourselves.
Cape Horn has a great mystique about it. The end of the world. Horrific storms. Graveyard to countless ships and sailors. There is a striking sculpture near the Cape, visible miles out to sea, to memorialize mariners who lost their lives trying to round the Horn. A Chilean family lives on the isolated, windswept island, collecting weather data.
It is also a place of great beauty, with severe cliffs upon which spectacular surf crashes, fueled by the west wind drift that makes the Drake Passage (for our benign crossing, renamed Drake Lake) so infamous. It is a meeting place between the Pacific and the Atlantic, between land and sea, between land birds and sea birds. It is the junction where we leave the open waters of the Drake and enter the protected Beagle Channel, the final leg of our adventure. It is green with trees, shrubs, grasses and wildflowers, which have been absent from our lives during the last week.
Our journey is coming to an end. Time can play odd tricks. Was it really just two weeks ago (and not a half of a lifetime) that we met in Buenos Aires? We have a huge new set of experiences to digest and integrate into our lives. How can a person not change after being in the company of albatrosses? Sitting amongst (and smelling) hundreds of thousands of penguins surely must alter our perceptions of our own importance. Cruising through ice, surrounded by glaciers and mountains leaves us speechless in trying to share with those who have not seen what we have seen, as well as without words to interpret the experience even to ourselves. Humpback whales breaching in the after dinner light cannot help but turn us into advocates for protecting the Southern Ocean.
Traveling expands our understanding and appreciation of our world, our fellow inhabitants (human and otherwise), and ourselves.
