We experience Cape Horn…

Today we get up early to experience traveling around Cape Horn. Cape Horn is a rocky headland on the island of Hornos Island, Tierra del Fuego is Chile. The first time a European rounded this island was when Magellan rounded it in 1520. In a wooden ship ,a wooden ship smaller than  my kitchen practically…a small,wooden ship with no heating,no indoor plumbing,not much of anything!

  Hornos Island in the background 

 

 

As we got closer to the Island and the Cape, the waters got choppier and the wind got more windy. The Cape is where the Atlantic and the Pacific meet and create the Drake Passage ( which we will head through in the next couple of days) Today we will make a left turn on the far side of the Horn and travel through the Beagle Chanel to the farthest south city in the world..Ushuaia,Argentina.

Today will be a sea day and so we will have the final trivia game from our entertainment director, Elmer. Our team has done quire well and our reputation as the team to beat has grown since Toronto,I think. Anyway today we won (again) and got a picture together. It was fun for us and we will miss the games. As we start the next phase of this trip,it is unknown whether there will be time for trivia as the pace will be quite different from what we have experienced so far. For now, we enjoy our notoriety!

Team members George,Sue .Steven,Al,Linda and Richard

Also today we pass an island with penguins hanging out. Look for a few bumps near the strip of land close to water….I could only see them with the binocs ….imagine we will see lots more in the next week!

In the afternoon we were invented to attend a Longitudinal World Cruise trivia contest with just the 83 member of our little group. It was Elmer’s parting gift to us…the questions were about the cruise itself and what we had been doing for the past 43 days! Its amazing how much we’ve done and how hard it is to remember

 

Elmer has a beautiful voice and at the end of our game he dedicated a song to us. It was quite emotional to realize that once again we are saying good bye to another crew member and reminds us that shortly we will be the ones saying goodbye. I’ll end this post today with a picture from a few afternoons ago…it had been cold,rainy and wet…. And yet this sign from the Universe was given to us as we sailed on…

 

Another day another glacier….and waterfalls and waterfalls and waterfalls!

 

Today our first excursion is a ride in the SOB to the Giribaldi glacier. I didn’t expect quite so many waterfalls. Every few feet there was a pretty impressive falls coming from mountains. 

 
 

 
  Along with magnificent rock walls, the trip started out lovely. We were hoping to get our SOB close to the glacier. There seemed to be very little ice flow in the water surrounding us so we are hopeful we can get close to the glacier itself. there was the occasional floating ice

Then all of a sudden there was lots more! It was fresh fall and there was a worry that our boat would get caught inside the ice as it pushed together so we quickly made our way to peek at the glacier and then high tail it back a ways.. with almost 900 horse power, this baby can really go when needed!

A view of the ice and the glacier. This glacier is made up of two river glaciers coming together. 

The dark center line is where they meet.

Larger ice

Look closely.. there is a white bird on the rick. I know I’m supposed to remember the names of all these birds but wow, its all i can do to get the picture!

Increased ice flow!

Sitting in our shock absorbent seats while the SOB flies down the water. After a hour of speeding through ice we headed back to our room before lunch and found this little guy waiting for us!a Magellan  penguin as a gift from Viking! I gotta say..the gifts keep coming and even though in my head I know we probably paid for this stuff with our fare, it still is fun and special  when something shows up unexpected.

Lunch included a long 10 foot chocolate bar next to a 6ft cheese bar. We managed to get far away and eat healthy first… then chocolate and cheese!!!!!

To work off the delightful lunch we headed back out in a zodiac to do more exploring. 

In the zodiac . Our driver,Laura, gave us the usual safety lecture and off we went. The beauty of the zodiac today is that we can slowly cruise along the shoreline and look for wildlife. Because of the distance the ship had to stop, due to the ice, the zodiacs don’t have enough power to get through the ice field close to the glacier..so this trip we look for wildlife.

Oh ,Sandy! How I wish you were here along with all my rock loving friends! The striating coastline from Technonic plate movement ( see how I sounded scientific there?) has made the most wonderful rock viewing!!!

 

 

And when looking at the rocks  you need to look carefully and closely and perhaps you will be rewarded! 

A nesting pair of kelp ducks? Anyway, no matter what they were, it sure was fun to see this pair. I keep forgetting that it’s spring here and of course its the right time for nesting!

Another pair of  birds! The female is the darker one. 

This was quite the waterfall…and of course we decided to get close and personal with it. Afterall what fun is just looking at waterfalls without really experiencing..

Getting close

Closer

Closer yet ( note the white drops in the picture)

Closest! Sitting underneath and getting hit with cold mountain stream water!  After the spring shower there was just enough time to head back to the ship and get the toys put away before we sail away from the Chilean Fjords and head excitedly towards the Cape Horn. It was undecided if the weather would bless us with being able to take the long way around to Ushuaia Argentina. The weather Gods must be with us this trip because shortly before we leave the Captain notifies us that the Cape will be our next agenda item! To think I am getting to travel in luxury comfort around one of the most dangerous passages that early explorers died trying to do….It blows my mind to think about it! Here I am with anything I want available to me and Magellan,Darwin,Anson, the crew of the Wager all barely survived making it around the Horn… I am so damn lucky to be alive and able to experience this!

Al takes a dive… he’s down but not out❣️

  

Al is ready to explore the underwater world in the submarine..

I’ll give you a recap of the submarine,Ringo from October 2 when we visited the toys in the lab. Shortly after that visit, Albert was weighed and signed up for two submarine dives.. one in the Chilean Fjords and one in Antarctica somewhere. Today was his dive. The weight it’s important as the sub captains must balance the weight of passengers in each side of the vehicle. Ringo holds six passengers plus the driver ( the captain)

 

 

The following are the pictures Al took from inside. To get to the sub he needed to board a zodiac, drive out to the sub and climb inside from the zodiac. He was given special boots (kayak boots ) in order to not scratch the windows. The following pictures are off of Albert’s phone and are somewhat cloudy. The water had fairly good visibility but the marine life was hard to see.  Top closed and the driver in his seat the gauges and controls for the driver

Going down to a depth of about 500 feet in the lights there are small little anchovies

Look close on the floor there are some skinnny things that look almost like star fish

All in all Albert spent about 30-40 minutes under the sea and enjoyed it. He is looking forward to the next dive in Antarctic.