As we opened our eyes on this last morning at sea aboard the National Geographic Explorer, we were met with a view of Cape Horn cloaked in heavy overcast skies. This southernmost point of South America, with its stark beauty steeped in sailors’ lore, was our first glimpse of the world we left behind so many days before.
The albatrosses that joined us on our passage south had returned and wheeled effortlessly in the wind alongside our ship. Atop the cape stood a monument - borne of the metal from ships wrecked upon the ragged shore – that captured their silhouette and stared down the fearsome westerlies. Peale’s dolphins joined us too, frolicking in the waves thrust forward as the ship parted the seas. Several sei whales, sleek greyhounds of the southern hemisphere, surfaced nearby.
These were to be our final hours in the Drake Passage, as soon we would round the horn into the Beagle Channel. Though many of us welcomed the calmer seas of the inshore waters, we all felt a sadness knowing that the Great White Continent, and the Southern Ocean that stood watch over its frozen shores, were now truly lost to the horizon that lay beyond our stern. A few solitary Magellanic penguins broke the surface, as if to remind us of what we had left behind. But soon they too were gone.
As the day’s light retreated, our ship pulled alongside the dock in Ushuaia. Many of us spilled into the night, cheeks rosy from our Captain’s farewell cocktail hour, and ambled through the streets of the world’s southernmost city. Soon we found ourselves in a small Irish pub, where we laughed and recounted stories of our recent adventure. What an incredible journey we had just been on! New friends now felt like dear old ones - the memories we shared would not soon be forgotten.
