National Geographic

Beginning at the End New Year’s Day on Cape Horn, Chile, is the perfect merger of moment and place for a Big Think.

By Norie Quintos for National Geographic Traveler, NOV/DEC issue.

IT’S THE DAWN of a new decade. And I’m at the end of the world. Specifically, it’s 01/01/10, and I’m at Cape Horn, the tip of the habitable world, land’s end, tailbone of the Americas, the planet’s last lick of land beyond which Earth’s two great oceans—the misnamed Pacific and the mighty Atlantic—clash in a not so friendly mashup. Beyond the Cape: the icy, forbidding shores of Antarctica, 600 miles away.

The Chilean expedition cruise ship Via Australis has deposited me and 130 fellow passengers on the Cape in a far more comfortable manner than early travelers to these parts experienced. Among these first explorers: Sir Francis Drake, whose storm-tossed detour led to the accidental discovery of the Drake Passage directly to the south; the Dutch merchant-explorers Le Maire and Schouten, who named the Cape after the latter’s hometown of Hoorn; and English naturalist Charles Darwin, who rounded the Cape as a passenger on the 90-foot brig-sloop H.M.S. Beagle on his way to the Galápagos Islands and eventual fame.
The carcasses of countless ships and steamers litter the ocean floor in these parts. The “furious fifties,” as the prevailing winds of the fiftysomething parallels of southern latitude are called (Cape Horn is at 56˚ S), are feared and storied.

Funneled by the Andes and the Antarctic Peninsula, they give rise to equally ferocious waves—the occasional iceberg adding yet more excitement. Even now, sailing around the Cape is to yachties what scaling Everest is to mountaineers, and only sailors who have “rounded the Horn” are by tradition per-mitted to wear a gold loop ear-ring and to dine with one leg on the table.

Landing on the Cape, which is actually a small islet called Hornos Island, remains enough of an iffy proposition today that the cruise ship company makes no guarantees in its promotional materials. According to the captain of the Via Australis, the ship manages to land at the Horn only about 75 percent of the time.

But the first day of 2010 turns out to be lucky: calm seas, the lightest of breezes, a hazy sun. We make landfall on Zodiacs, clamber up a steep flight of stairs, greet the lone (and in all likelihood lonely) Chilean Navy sailor at his guard post, and snap the requisite photos. Eventually my shipmates disperse to explore the lighthouse and visit the tiny chapel, leaving me alone to gaze at the Cape (the actual point itself is protected from the erosive tread of visitors).

Then it hits me. For one brief shining moment, I’m the southernmost human in Americas.

Prosaic thoughts give way to the profound during moments and at coordinates such as these. (It helps that I am beyond the tentacled reach of Wi-Fi and thus freed from the neurotic blips that pass for Age of Twitter.)

I whip out my notebook. I jot down deep thoughts, burning questions, fervent wishes, and firm resolves. I visualize them rising to the heavens, carried on the wings of the albatrosses—which are the souls of perished sailors, if you believe the sea lore.

It doesn’t have to be New Year’s Day on Cape Horn. It can be any combination of place and time that takes you away from the incessant demands of daily living, places you in direct contact with nature in its stark magnificence, and throws wide open the window on your essential self so you can get a good hard look. The auspicious spots and moments can be truly empowering, even course-changing.

I don’t know whether I’ll adhere to the to-do list scribbled here on this austral shore any better than to previous Year’s resolutions I’ve made, but never have I felt the motivation and the promise more keenly.

At the lighthouse cum souvenir shop, I sign the year’s new guest book (page one!) and buy an El Fin del Mundo (End of the World) postcard stamped with today’s date. Then I rejoin friends old and new back on the boat. The end, come to think of it, makes a fine beginning.

Small ships run by cruise companies such as Cruceros Australis (departing from Punta Arenas, Chile, or Ushuaia, Argentina, on three- and four-night itineraries) may call at the Horn. National Geographic Expeditions offers a 13-day Patagonia trip that includes this cruise. Day-trips by helicopter or tour boat are also available.