Please note:  It was a sunny, but very cold day so I shot all the pictures through the windows on the ship…that should explain their quality, as in “lack thereof”!)

Saturday, March 4^th

We are sailing today, but it is “significant sailing” or scenic cruising as Viking calls it.  We successfully circumnavigated Cape Horn! (We even got a certificate for it! And now we can wear an earring…)

The views from the ship are magnificent.  We have a wonderful day, breezy but no real wind, intermittent sunshine and generally a sea that is rough, but going our way! It is easy to sit and imagine the brave explorers who sailed in these waters in much smaller craft than our ocean liner.  The waves crash against the rocks to warn “don’t get too close”!

Cape Horn has a manned lighthouse that is very picturesquely perched on a flat-topped area of the island of that name.

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I have included this slide show because you can use the lighthouse as a focal point as we sailed around “the Horn.”  It was very impressive, as I have said before, and really a meaningful sail based on all the history lessons we have enjoyed on this trip. Sailing in the wake of the famous explorers who went before us!

It also has a huge monument to the sailors who lost their lives.  I am not sure of the material it is made of but it weighs something like 14 tons.  It is very large, and when you see it at the right angle you see an albatross in flight.  The albatross is said to carry the souls of sailors who die to the Other World.  We also saw a few albatrosses winging through the air, so the poetry of the place was complete.

 

 

And, it only seemed fitting that this was our view out to see as we left the continent of South America for a few days.

For the rest of today and all of tomorrow we are at sea.  Switch to the Life on the Ship section now.