Cabo de Hornos

We will walk on Cape Horn!  Maybe.  We won’t know until 7:15 in the morning, which is the time we are to be in the lounge where we wait to board the zodiaks.  The captain will decide if it is a go or not, based on general weather conditions and after the sailors measure the winds, and assess the tide and currents.

Quite a few people are on the deck outside the lounge, taking pictures, when I realize they will be in line for the zodiaks before us.  Before 7:15, we move out there too, and edge up toward the stairs leading down to the boarding area.  At 7:20 or so, the announcement is made.  It’s a go.  We will walk on Cape Horn!

Irv and I are in the middle of the pack as it turns out.  Each zodiak trip is taking only ten people, rather than the normal twelve or fourteen, because of the rough seas.  

We get there, and it’s beautiful.  Breezy, and beautiful.

We hear, “Don’t take your life vests off!”  We have to be ready to leave in a hurry.  

Our first visit is to the albatross-shaped Cape Horn Monument commemorating the lives of thousands of seafarers who perished while attempting to sail around the horn.

We pose for the obligatory photo, and head down.

On our way up to the monument, we see a fellow OAT traveler coming down.  When I comment that we didn’t see him waiting outside the lounge, he confesses that he hurried down a different stairway, came out on the loading deck, and squeezed onto an early zodiak, answering a “one more, only one” call.  Good thinking!

Now he is on his way to check out the view from the lighthouse and Stella-Maris Chapel.

We are just back to the Y in the trail between the monument and the lighthouse when the captain sounds the alarm.  Head back to the ship.   The weather is changing.  Or maybe we are just out of time.  We must leave the area without seeing the lighthouse and chapel.

We walked on Cape Horn!

Date of travel:  March 2018