| It might be the ultimate travel oxymoron: cruisin’ Cape Horn. More than 10,000 sailors have died trying to "round the cape." For them, remote Cape Horn was literally the end of the world. Cape Horn is a rocky outcropping located at the bottom of the continent of South America where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans collide and myth begins.
My own Cape experience began with a strange feeling about rounding this mythological point aboard the luxury cruise ship ms Rotterdam complete with casino, art gallery and health spa.
Announcing that the Rotterdam was approaching Cape Horn, the ship’s lecturer had assumed the role of pirate tour guide as the Cape came into sight. Speaking over the vessel’s public address system in a cheesy B-movie style, he recounted the many dangers that have faced sailors of small vessels who have attempted to round the southern tip of South America. "Arrr mateys," screeched the faux pirate. "Thousands have died at the Cape and are now part of the sea."
Making this journey in the lap of luxury aboard a cruise liner, my biggest fear was being unable to dodge the huge amount of food available at the ship’s buffet tables nearly 24 hours a day. I was one of 1,000 passengers on deck as the ship sailed through choppy, blue waters past the rocky, southernmost tip of South America. To view Cape Horn, arguably the most famous point in the entire world, I stood on the ship’s gleaming teak deck overlooking one of the vessel’s two swimming pools. The sense of surrealism was almost overpowering. No, this wasn’t rounding the Cape, this was cruisin’ the Cape.
I shrugged off my lingering guilt about less-fortunate sailors who now reside below the surface of the sea by gathering as much information as I could about Cape Horn’s most famous visitor – Charles Darwin. Born February 12, 1809 at Shrewsbury, England, Darwin gained celebrity status for his observations about life on the Galapagos Islands. What is less well known is that he spent the most productive years of his career as a "gentleman naturalist," exploring the southern coastline of South America.
Darwin was only 22 when he set off aboard the HMS Beagle under the tutelage of Captain Robert FitzRoy. The focus of the voyage was map-making, not observing nature, but Darwin – who had trained to be both a physician and then a minister in the Church of England – took the opportunity to also take careful studies of the flora and fauna at remote points in South America, including Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. It was a privilege to survey the same remote territory that Darwin had visited more than 150 years earlier. Taking his cue, I, too, took close notice of this mystical place studded with ice-blue glaciers and vast tracts of windswept land that seemed untouched by humans.
When one rounds the Cape, you have the right (according to hearty seamen) to wear a gold hoop in your ear and, if so moved, to spit into the wind whenever you choose. I have so far declined both "honours" but rather took great pleasure in reading Darwin’s words from his journal The Voyage of the Beagle during my excursion. "There is something very solemn in these scenes," he wrote. "At no time does the consciousness in what a remote corner of the world you are then standing come so strongly before the mind."
Darwin had more than four years left in his explorations after he wrote this entry. After returning home to England in 1836 he worked on a manuscript about his experiences during the voyage of the Beagle for another two decades. By recounting his observations he would eventually turn conventional wisdom on its head by authoring The Origins of Species, published in 1859.
It is Cape Horn and the other remote stretches of South American coastline that remain a symbol of the danger Darwin faced as he set out to understand the world. My voyage was not in service to science but adventure, yet by viewing this same remote point of rock, I understood how Darwin had been mesmerized by what he witnessed.
Momentarily tempted by the cozy atmosphere available inside the grand vessel, I decided to stay on the lower deck and continue considering the momentous scene drifting past. As Cape Horn faded into the distance, the pool remained empty of tourists. Buffeted by a sharp, cool breeze, I suddenly felt a powerful connection between this historic place and Darwin, a young man who would go on to forever alter our understanding of human existence. |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.