End of Blog Photo Collage - Part Last

The Towers (Torres del Paine)

Black-necked Swan (Torres del Paine)

Southern Giant-petrel (Cape Horn)

Yellow flower (Torres del Paine)

White-crested Elaenia (Torres del Paine)

Torrent Duck family (Torres del Paine)
How could I not add this photo?

Your very proud hosts of this blog, Ivan and Nora Schwab (Cape Horn)

Stone Memorial to the Lost Sailors (Spanish)
Soy el albatros que te espera
En el final del mundo.
Soy el alma olvidada de los marinos muertos,
Que cruzaron el Cabo de Hornos,
Desde todos los mares de la tierra.
Pero ellos no murieron en las furiosas olas,
Hoy vuelan en mis alas,
Hacia la eternidad
En la última grieta de los vientos antárcticos.

Stone Memorial to the Lost Sailors (English)
I am the albatross who awaits you
at the end of the world.
I am the forgotten soul of the dead mariners
who sailed across Cape Horn
from all the oceans of the world.
But, they have not died in the fury of the waves.
Today they sail on my wings, towards eternity,
in the last crevice of the Antarctic winds.

Poem written by Sara Vial as a memorial to the seamen
who lost their lives crossing Cape Horn.
December 1992

Sunset in Ushuaia on Dec. 14 was 10:05PM

End-of-Blog Photo Collage - Part One

Ashy-headed Goose (Torres del Paine)

Blue flowers (Torres del Paine)

Chilean Flicker (Torres del Paine)

Silvery Grebe with chick (Torres del Paine)

Southern (Crested) Caracara (Torres del Paine)

Torres del Paine (with Kestrel flying)

Guanaco (Torres del Paine)

Thorn-tailed Rayadito (Torres del Paine)

Crested Duck (Torres del Paine)

Yellow and red flower (Torres del Paine)

Chiloe Wigeon (Torres del Paine)

Cuernos del Paine

Two Guanacos (Torres del Paine)

Upland Goose (Torres del Paine)

A few more photos on the next post - sorry, went over my limit!

Dec. 14 - USHUAIA - Final Disembarkation, and the Long Journey Home

Sunrise on Dec. 14 was at 3:53AM
We had arrived at Ushuaia during the night and docked, all while we passengers were sleeping peacefully. For the first time in 4 mornings, our cabin was not moving! I took a moment for a couple of photos of Ushuaia from the vantage point of the 3rd level bow. These are arranged on top of each other, but if you could put them side by side, the one on top would be on the left and the one at the bottom would be on the right:

We had to walk through the blue-roofed building to go through customs.

The weather was as lovely as it looks! Our travel day was just beginning, though. First was breakfast. We went down early because we had to get to the airport for a relatively early departure for Buenos Aires, so we waited on the steps for the breakfast room to open. Carolyn came down shortly after we did and took this photo:

We were dressed for our 30-hour journey to Fair Oaks from the bottom of the world! We had breakfast with Carolyn, then we waited to receive our passports back from the folks in Reception onboard the Stella. When we received our passports, there was a little surprise with them. These two certificates were with our passports:

Not only did we get these impressive certificates, verifying that we had crossed Cape Horn, but our passports had been stamped with this fabulous image:

If you turn it upside down, you can read the stamp.
THIS IS IN MY PASSPORT!!
Is that not just the coolest thing ever?!

So, the blog has come to an end. I appreciate the dedication of those of you who have read this blog to its end. I hope you have had some measure of delight and education in reading it. This was one of the most wonderful trips we have ever taken, emotionally, educationally, socially. We met some wonderful and interesting people, we learned an astonishing amount of information about Chile and its denizens, we connected, in a sort of spiritual way, with the travelers of the past. I want to present a line of photos in the next post, each with captions, of birds, flowers, places and things, most of which did not make the 'first cut' in the construction of the blog. I think these are photos, though, that you may enjoy seeing. Thank you for participating.

Dec. 13 - WHALES!

We had no more disembarkations scheduled once we were all back on board. The Stella was headed for the port of Ushuaia which we were to reach tonight. We would sleep on board and make our final disembarkation after breakfast. In the afternoon, Ivan and I were getting our things sorted and packed for our long journey home when, over the PA system, came the announcement that there were whales off the port bow! I raced out of our cabin while Ivan tried to assemble his camera. There was a large pod of Minke whales all around the ship!  There was a small party of three off the port bow and Carolyn snapped this photo of me watching several more off the stern portside:

Judy, you'll note that I'm wearing the Gumbo Limbo T-shirt you gave me!

In the excitement of the moment, I had dashed out with no shoes on! But to see Minke whales, which I had never seen before, was a BIG thrill! Ivan took these two very nice photos:

Trio of Minke Whales

As we rounded the Cape, Ivan also took these interesting photos from the sea, looking back at the Cape:

This is Cape Horn. We are south of the island, looking to the north.

After rounding the Horn, we are now traveling northwest, looking northeast at this island.

Sunset on Dec. 13 was at 10:12PM

Dec. 13 - More adventures as we leave the Cape

If you look at the time stamp on the last posted photo, you'll note that it was taken at 8:30AM. Our day, which had been packed with adventures to this point, had barely begun! We returned to the boat, had a proper breakfast, and prepared for the actual crossing of Cape Horn, for which we had been cleared by the crew. There was a stiff wind blowing and the seas were enthusiastically, but not dangerously, high. We were going for it! At about 11:30AM, we actually crossed Cape Horn, the nemesis of so many mariners before us. The Stella made the crossing without incident.
We had one more disembarkation to be done, in Wulaia Bay.  Here is the earlier map:

Most of the passengers would be doing a walking tour of the settlement in this area. Eight of us, however had enthusiastically signed up for a kayaking trip around several islands in the bay. After lunch, Ivan and I donned our wetsuits and kayak jackets and Carolyn obligingly took our photo:

Pretty pitiful-looking kayakers, if you ask me! So, we put on our life jackets and went to the zodiacs. I thought I overheard several of the passengers muttering about how loony it seemed to be in a kayak in these waters! We would not be deterred! Wulaia Bay is a lovely sheltered bay, relatively shallow, and, for our trip, the tides were in-between coming in and going out. This meant we would probably not be lost at sea in a kayak! Ivan and I thought we were going to be in a double, but, at the last minute, a man signed his two sons up, one of whom had never been in a kayak! Ergo, the solitary double went to the young boy and one of the guides. It's been awhile since I was in a solitary kayak - and that time I was in a sea kayak with a functioning rudder! - so the track of my little kayak looked like Magellan's track as he attempted to round Cape Horn! First I went to the right, then the left, then straight for awhile, then left again, etc. I think I covered nearly twice the distance as the others did. We saw some tiny octopuses in the kelp beds and, on the way back to shore, I spotted an Andean Condor, a bird which most of the travelers had not yet seen. It was doing that Condor thing of circling very high in the sky, but, seen with binoculars, clearly had the white ruff around its neck. Truly an exciting bird to see! Anyway, here is a photo Ivan took of me as we concluded our kayaking in Wulaia Bay:

Dec. 13 - Back to the Stella

On our way back to the Stella in the zodiac, we were delighted when our pilot took us over to an island on which several Southern, or South American, Sea Lions were roosting. These animals were huge! Of course, I've never actually been very close to a California Sea Lion, but the ones shown in the photos below seemed simply enormous! I apologize for the blurriness of the photos. We were bobbing up and down on the seas that were crashing into the rocks the sea lions were resting on, and I had not intended to take any photos, but something caught my attention on that rock. There was a bird of prey standing near the large sea lion at the top. I wasn't sure exactly what it was. Ivan and I knew it was not a skua based on the way it was standing, but we had not seen this bird before and we were flummoxed! When we returned, I sought out Carlos, the ship's bird person. He told me it was a Striated Caracara and they they hang out around the sea lions hoping for a crack at some afterbirth, or maybe even a newborn. So, these photos, bad as they are, are presented here as images of the one and only Striated Caracara we saw!

The Striated Caracara stands 2 feet tall.
See why I thought the sea lions were HUGE?!

This was taken from a slightly different angle, but is a better photo of the Caracara.

Dec. 13 - Some thoughts on Cape Horn

I had some quiet moments while we were all roaming around the area of Cape Horn National Park and found myself thinking about all the people who had died in their attempts either to circumnavigate the globe, or merely to discover what was beyond the horizon. These mariners set off, usually from Spain, Portugal, or England, not knowing if they would ever return, not knowing what wonders, or terrors, awaited them. The hardships they encountered were unimaginable to us. They navigated by the stars, they had only each other to ask for advice on setting a course, they had no knowledge of other peoples who might be living in unknown lands. Their journey, described in the book, Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen, was frightening, awe-inspiring, tragic, but ultimately successful and reading the book gave me a profound respect for what they had done. The memorial sculpture with the albatross in the center is beautiful and seems appropriate. The albatross is a bird forever on the wing or on the sea in search of sustenance, coming to land only to raise young. Most of these mariners to whom the memorial is dedicated were like the albatross, spending their entire adult lives, and ultimately dying on the sea while in search of a type of sustenance. I felt honored to be standing on this ground, looking at the waters that either carried them on in their search or abruptly ended that search. An awe-inspiring legacy.