Cape Horn and the Beagle Channel

We have crossed the Drake Passage and arrived at Cape Horn just after breakfast. It is most southern island off the tip of South America, and well known to all of us from sailing stories of old. And now we have rounded it, too. Steve read us the poem that is on a plaque near the albatross monument that we could see in the distance.

“I am the albatross who awaits you at the end of the earth.
I am the forgotten soul of the dead mariners
Who rounded Cape Horn from all the seas of the world
But they did not perish in the furious waves.
Today they fly on my wings for all eternity
In the ultimate embrace of the Antarctic winds.”

-Sara Vial, 2002

As if to usher us back from the Antarctic waters, black-browed albatross circled the ship as we gazed at our first green landscape in 8 days.

Antarctica may be far away in miles but it is very prominent in our thoughts. As I sit and look out at the waves and sky I ponder the last 20 days. I find myself thinking back ten days ago to a Zodiac cruise at Hercules Bay on South Georgia Island. After a beautiful morning with macaroni penguins, we were toasting with our hot chocolate (thanks to the drive up hot chocolate delivery). On that morning, June shared a toast in Irish Gaelic, which she translated for us as “That we may live to see a time like this again.” This became my mantra for the rest of the trip. I would find myself admiring the scene from the shore or a Zodiac and give it my own silent toast, in appreciation for the beauty and wildness around me.

There has been a lot of talk on this trip about capturing “the moment.” Although the phrase was usually used in terms of photography, I think that we have all been capturing “moments” whether we had a camera in our hands or not. All we really needed were engaged minds and open hearts. And lucky for us that our days have been filled with moments upon moments, so many in fact that it is hard to list them all. There are the obvious ones like seeing our first albatross, landings at a king penguin colony of 10,000’s of birds, beaches full of fur seals and elephant seals, a hike in Shackleton’s footsteps, a quiet moment on a breathtakingly beautiful hike, Zodiac landings that would make the Navy Seals proud, watching killer whales or fin whales, seeing a thankful leopard seal on Thanksgiving Day, staring at endlessly blue icebergs in clear water, seeing the ship glide through the ice at sunset, or paddling our own kayaks through that ice, experiences with friends both old and new. Most of us came for the wildlife but what many of us are most taken by is the ice – the landscape, the sheer uninterrupted beauty and magic of it all.

Now as we all head back home we will look at the world differently. Not because it has changed, but because we have. If nothing else, we have been renewed, reconnected, and revived. So once again a toast to an incredible trip and a fine collection of shipmates “That we may live to see a time like this again.”