Drake Passage
It was only six hours ago that we had left Ushuaia, Argentina. The small city was like a postcard for ‘Winter Wonderland’, there had just been a fresh, light snow and the “evening” was sunny with blue skies, white mountains, small buildings of yellow, blue, red and white, sparkling, twinkling, and crystal clear. There was wind too, but there is always wind in the Beagle Channel, rushing from the west, squeezed between the mountains, fast, like cold water falling from an absurdly high cliff.
Now, just after midnight, we are passing the Horn, heading south, into Drake Passage. Cape Horn, that last beacon of humanity before the wilderness of the Southern Ocean, a vast and forbidding moat around Nature’s final fortress, Antarctica. A perfect time to enter the Drake, in darkness at the end of one day, at the beginning of another, near the end of one year, with the next looming but out of sight, waiting for the light of tomorrow. This would be a good time to reflect on the past, look at the person I am, at my life. But that is not what I am doing right now; I am concerned about the Dive Locker on the top deck of the National Geographic Endeavour.
Drake Passage, what to expect? It is not capricious, no, not at all, rather it is powerful, not tame, not very well “paved” and only a fool would enter it without concerns, expectations and a certain sense of adventure. Tierra del Fuego, Beagle Channel, Cape Horn and Drake Passage; these names alone must conjure up something: childhood stories, a primal memory, a restlessness, a wanderlust, that hallmark of humanity, unless perhaps you are a potato, full of eyes yet unaware of what field you are growing in! It was less than a hundred years ago when we first crossed the Southern Ocean and stood at the South Pole with triumph, heroics, tragedy, and celebration.
I am pleasantly surprised, everything is in good shape in the Dive Locker, not too much extreme motion, some rolling, a bit of pitching, just this in the face of a strong, constant wind… she is a good ship! Some day, people will have the option to easily fly to Antarctica, that will be different, much like today flying from Chicago to LA, rather than driving Route 66. Drake Passage and the Southern Ocean, they are more than an environmental transition, they are a transition of emotions, of time, of reality. To me, you can not get to Antarctica any other way than by sea, otherwise you will probably not arrive to the same place that we are going, you will not have Traveled.
The rest of the day is spent differently by different people; I read, work on projects, look at the sea, the birds, the clouds, think and feel, about today, about all the yesterdays, but not too much about tomorrow.
It was only six hours ago that we had left Ushuaia, Argentina. The small city was like a postcard for ‘Winter Wonderland’, there had just been a fresh, light snow and the “evening” was sunny with blue skies, white mountains, small buildings of yellow, blue, red and white, sparkling, twinkling, and crystal clear. There was wind too, but there is always wind in the Beagle Channel, rushing from the west, squeezed between the mountains, fast, like cold water falling from an absurdly high cliff.
Now, just after midnight, we are passing the Horn, heading south, into Drake Passage. Cape Horn, that last beacon of humanity before the wilderness of the Southern Ocean, a vast and forbidding moat around Nature’s final fortress, Antarctica. A perfect time to enter the Drake, in darkness at the end of one day, at the beginning of another, near the end of one year, with the next looming but out of sight, waiting for the light of tomorrow. This would be a good time to reflect on the past, look at the person I am, at my life. But that is not what I am doing right now; I am concerned about the Dive Locker on the top deck of the National Geographic Endeavour.
Drake Passage, what to expect? It is not capricious, no, not at all, rather it is powerful, not tame, not very well “paved” and only a fool would enter it without concerns, expectations and a certain sense of adventure. Tierra del Fuego, Beagle Channel, Cape Horn and Drake Passage; these names alone must conjure up something: childhood stories, a primal memory, a restlessness, a wanderlust, that hallmark of humanity, unless perhaps you are a potato, full of eyes yet unaware of what field you are growing in! It was less than a hundred years ago when we first crossed the Southern Ocean and stood at the South Pole with triumph, heroics, tragedy, and celebration.
I am pleasantly surprised, everything is in good shape in the Dive Locker, not too much extreme motion, some rolling, a bit of pitching, just this in the face of a strong, constant wind… she is a good ship! Some day, people will have the option to easily fly to Antarctica, that will be different, much like today flying from Chicago to LA, rather than driving Route 66. Drake Passage and the Southern Ocean, they are more than an environmental transition, they are a transition of emotions, of time, of reality. To me, you can not get to Antarctica any other way than by sea, otherwise you will probably not arrive to the same place that we are going, you will not have Traveled.
The rest of the day is spent differently by different people; I read, work on projects, look at the sea, the birds, the clouds, think and feel, about today, about all the yesterdays, but not too much about tomorrow.
