Because of its legendary storms and rough seas, sailing round Cape Horn has gone down in history as a challenge for all seafarers. The weather forecast for our Cape navigation was looking a bit doubtful with a nasty weather pattern fast approaching. Nevertheless the Captain managed to make it but not before we climbed up to the Cape Horn lighthouse!! It was one of THOSE once in lifetime experiences - a bit scary and rather challenging (for me) but absolutely exhilarating.
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| The Lighthouse is circled in yellow |
You think you know about places and historical events but if you’re like me often you really don’t; travel keeps me on a steep learning curve. We all know where Cape Horn is. What I didn’t know is that the infamous Cape is located on the small island of Hornos in the Chilean archipelago. It is the most southern headland and marks the northern boundary of the Drake Passage.
So there we were ...... We were making a landing, not at the Cape itself because it is a sheer rock face, but at a spot about 1 km northeats not far from the lighthouse.
The expedition staff went ahead to check the landing site was manageable - and they said that it was. So off we went! The ‘beach’ was a narrow band of loose slippery rocks but not too bad, they said! Landing was a matter of rolling out of the zodiac into the water between waves. I was just a teensy bit slow. In fact I was not watching the waves but trying to gauge how slippery the rocks were. And voila! a wave caught me and dumped buckets of water into my boots. It was just water so no problemo but I sploshed for hours as I walked.
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| We were to climb that cliff |
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| Many of us wouldn't have made it ashore if it hadn't been for the Expedition team |
The climb to the top of the cliff was very steep and we were wearing an extra few kilos of clothing - fleece-lined expedition jacket as well as a life jacket, wet-weather gear and heavy gum boots and walking polos so it was slow going but I made it (Lindsay reckons there were over 150 steps before the long steep duckboard). Then we headed off along duckboard to visit the lighthouse and hopefully to get across the island to a wonderful monument to many sailors who had died attempting to sail around the ‘Horn’.
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| Lindsay was ahead of me and already at the lighthouse |
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| A lonely but appropriate spot for a chapel. A few of us sheltered in there from the wind. |
The weather closed in and the wind came howling like banshees at 50 odd knots (over 90kph) from the west up and over the island bringing with it horizontal lashing rain. It was the strongest wind I’ve ever walked/stumbled in. A few people were actually blown off the duckboards and down into the surrounding bracken. Me? I could have very easily lost my footing but I just trundled along at a slow shuffle. The weather was not good so we decided not to walk the extra 1km to the Albatross monument because we still had to get back down off the ‘plateau’.
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| The Monument |
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| Pic: Erincullin Captured from the Internet |
The monument is rather stunning and has a very beautiful poem by Sara Vial engraved on it which our Expedition leader read to us as we sailed past the Cape. It is very moving. But we still had to get down the cliff which was slow going particularly for Lindsay who volunteered to carry one expieditioner's wheelchair down the cliff to the tender. The expedition crew had carried her and her chair up to the clifftop but nobody else offered to carry her chair back down the cliff.
Once aboard we set sail for the Cape into a sky which was slowly turning magnificent golden then fiery orange.
This is Sara Vial’s haunting poem
“I am the albatross that waits for you at the end of the Earth.
I am the forgotten soul of the dead sailors who crossed Cape Horn from all the seas of the world.
But they did not die in the furious waves.
Today they fly in my wings to eternity in the last trough of the Antarctic wind.”
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