As the strange, mighty ship slipped swiftly through the water, tribesmen set smoky fires along the coast to signal those downwind of its passage. From his ship’s deck, Ferdinand Magellan observed the smoke and dubbed this island Tierra del Fuego — Land of Fire.
Almost 500 years later, I watched the passing terrain from the deck of another ship, the Stella Australis. We’d set sail from Ushuaia, Argentina, a small city in southern Tierra del Fuego, bound for Cape Horn and beyond. During our passage we’d sail through fjords, channels, and the Strait of Magellan, a natural waterway discovered by the Portuguese explorer that separates the South American continent from the Patagonian archipelago.
Ice, more than fire, struck me throughout our voyage. Darwin’s Ice Field (formally known as Cordillera Darwin) stretched across the skyline for mile after nautical mile. The range is named for naturalist Charles Darwin, who explored this terrain as a young man in the 1830s aboard another famous ship, the HMS Beagle.
Stella Australis
I boarded the Stella Australis early evening, gathering with other passengers in the upper-deck Darwin Lounge for a welcoming toast with the captain and crew. While waiters passed around champagne and Pisco Sours, Captain Silvo Moreno gave an overview of the wonders that awaited us at the “end of the world.” He introduced the small crew who would serve and guide us over the next five days aboard his sturdy 150-passenger vessel, built especially for these waters.
In Latin, Stella Australis mean “star of the southern hemisphere.” Fittingly, on the first night aboard ship a crew member invited a few of us topside to enjoy the southern constellations on a rare balmy night. He pointed out the Southern Cross with his laser. Orion and other familiar constellations seemed somehow askew when viewed from the bottom of the world.
Cape Horn
Overnight the ship sailed through Beagle Channel, entering Nassau Bay at dawn. At 6:30 am, loudspeakers blared a wakeup announcement. Had I not been awake already, the blast would have knocked me out of bed. “At 7:00 sharp,” the announcer warned, “we go ashore at Cape Horn National Park.” The southernmost island in the archipelago, Cape Horn is the final spit of land before Antarctica.
While named by a Dutch maritime expedition in 1616 after the town of Hoorn in West Friesland, many a sailor believed Cape Horn referred to the devil’s antlers. Fierce winds rebuff west-bound ships at the point where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet. Shipwrecks litter the deep, a saltwater grave for many who dared the passage.
To honor those lost in these waters, an ethereal monument resembling a condor in flight stands at the highest point on the island. Legend claims that a man’s soul does not die here, but becomes an albatross forever circling the Cape. Reverently, I trekked up the hill to the monument, feeling the presence of legions of souls.
Declared a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 2005, the island includes a lighthouse maintained by the Chilean Navy. Officer Adan Otaiza, the lighthouse keeper, along with his wife and two daughters introduced themselves when I approached. Though on a secluded outpost, the family relishes the Cape and requested posting here. Officer Otaiza graciously showed me and the other guests around the lighthouse and posed for photos. His young daughter stamped a special Cape Horn certificate for each us to commemorate our visit.
Reboarding the ship, I noticed a Cape Horn flag flying on the top deck. The bold black and white banner whipped smartly in the breeze. The captain had decided weather conditions permitted sailing around Cape Horn, a feat accomplished by the Stella Australis only three times this year. The entire ship, passengers and crew alike, buzzed in anticipation and tracked the ship’s progress on navigation maps appearing on every video monitor throughout the ship. By the time we made the final loop, almost everyone on board, myself included, had taken photos with the Cape Horn flag and of the red circumnavigation route marked on the map.
Blue, Blue Glaciers
Early next morning we were up and at it again. I donned my cap, rain pants and jacket, waterproof shoes, and finally a big orange life vest. Before climbing into a Zodiac raft, I hung my cabin key on a numbered peg (the crew needed a way to know if anyone was missing before the ship sailed away to the next destination). With the help of a crew member, I stepped down into the bobbing rubber raft, and then scooted to the end to make room for the next adventurer. The Zodiac driver swung his leg over the oversized gearshift as if mounting a steed and revved the engine. On open water, he raced across white caps aiming straight for a massive glacier wall.
Our destination that morning was Pia Glacier. Our group was fortunate to have two experts aboard. Patricio Arévalos, formerly an English teacher from Punta Arenas, served as an expedition guide for the Stella Australis. He knew the ins and outs of every trail. Patty Hostiuck, a Smithsonian naturalist, shared her expertise in glacial formation and the surrounding ecosystem.
Pia Glacier
“It all begins with a snowflake,” Patty told us. Each year, new snowfall compresses snow left behind the previous year. During the ice age, glaciers grew, flake by flake, over the millennia. In fact, glaciers once covered almost all of Patagonia as part of the immense Patagonian Ice Sheet. As the earth warmed, the ice sheet retreated, but three massive ice fields remain. The Darwin Ice Field extends 890 square miles over the Andes with elevations over 6,600 feet. “Like its northern counterpart, Alaska,” Patty said, “Chile abounds with fjords and tidewater glaciers set within a temperate zone.” On a pleasant 50-degree autumn day, I appreciated the incongruity of glaciers in a temperate zone.
At the foot of Pia Glacier, we disembarked on a rocky shore. Following Patricio, we climbed a narrow path that ran perpendicular to the glacier wall. Finally, our group reached a plateau where I stared eye to eye with the glacier crown. This pale gray monolith wore a bright, aqua-blue skirt. Freshly fallen ice (called calving) revealed the glacier’s pristine blue interior. On her crown, Pia sported a blindingly white new cap of snow.
Later that day, I rode the Zodiac to nearby Garibaldi Glacier. With no landing spot or even a safe place to anchor ship, the raft entered a narrow inlet for a closer look at the glacier. Ice-capped mountains with lush green vegetation towered above the water.
Waterfalls of glacial melt plunged into the salty fjord. Reaching Garibaldi, I saw a brilliant blue mass nestled among the mountains. Unlike most glaciers in Patagonia, Garibaldi continues to gain mass and advance, rather than whittle away.
Here, little calving takes place, but Patricio spied a small ice chunk floating in the water. Hauling it into the Zodiac, he showed us the clarity of the ice. Nothing remained of its parent’s striking hue.
Why, I wondered, are glaciers this amazing blue? The density of ice in a glacier, I learned from Patty, defined its color. Fresh snow, filled with air bubbles, reflects the entire spectrum of light and so appears white. As glaciers formed, their weight squashed the air bubbles and absorbed longer green and red waves of light. The shorter blue waves scattered across the surface, reflecting amazing, otherworldly blues.
The unusually mild weather we’d enjoyed left us the next day. Freezing rain stung my face as the Zodiac sped across the icy water. Cold, miserable minutes later, the raft arrived at the foot of the most unusual glacier I’d seen. Condor Glacier sported spiky blue peaks and a torrent of water gushed from its base. The power of the glacial river lurched the little craft to and fro.
On either side of Condor, a rocky moraine marked the glacier’s former boundaries. Unlike Garibaldi, this glacier was in retreat. Hardy vegetation grew almost up to the blue ice. On the narrow shore, I watched kelp geese feed. The male stood out with his brilliant white feathers, which Patricio told me lured predators toward himself and away from his modestly-colored nesting mate.
At nearby Aguila Glacier, I encountered more of the ecosystem that developed in the glacier’s wake. With a break in the storm, the raft landed on the beach of a small lagoon created by glacial melt. While Aguila is now stable, a young forest had built up around its previous perimeter. Along the beach and through the forest, Patricio pointed out Calafate berries and wild strawberries, which had once helped sustain the indigenous Yaghan people. Following Patricio’s example, I picked some Calafate berries and enjoyed their sweet-tart taste.
The lush glacial forest Calafate Berries
High above, I spotted a condor standing on a ledge. Though I waited, hoping to see it fly, it merely walked around the ledge. “Too much food, too little draft,” our guide suggested. After three days of sumptuous shipboard dining, I knew how it felt. To end our cold day of glacier hunting, a bartender from the Stella Australis met us at the Zodiac and handed each of us a cup of hot chocolate (with a choice to warm it further with a shot of whiskey). Of course, I did.
Penguins!
The last day with the ship was also the highlight — I met penguins! Overnight we’d cruised through Magdalena Channel and back into the Strait of Magellan. Early morning the ship anchored off Magdalena Island, home to a large, thriving colony of Magellanic penguins. Walking a path that wended its way up to a lighthouse, I saw thousands of penguins popping their heads out of holes in the ground. At first take, they resembled groundhogs — except for those unmistakable black and white tuxedos.
A member of the ship’s expedition crew had briefed all of the passengers the evening before on our penguin encounter. We’d learned that these penguins return year after year to nest and raise their young. Because of its importance as a penguin breeding site, Magdalena Island has been designated a national nature preserve managed by a government agency, Corporación Nacional Forestal. Currently, over 65,000 breeding pairs arrive on the island each year, usually in September, and stay until March.
Unlike many species, Magellanic Penguins dig burrows for their nests and line them with grasses. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs and feeding the chicks. The feeding process entails the parent eating fish, and then regurgitating it into the waiting chick’s beak. By the time of my March expedition, the babies had already matured enough to swim away. Their parents, depleted from lack of nutrition for themselves, stayed behind to fatten up and molt old feathers for shiny new weatherproof ones. Within a week or two, they too would swim away to winter feeding areas in warmer seas.
As I walked along, the little pelagic birds ducked shyly into their burrows. A few honked their displeasure, but most quietly peeked out at me. After a very short time, curiosity overcame fear.
Individual birds and couples began to waddle up to me. One fellow stopped just short of my shoe and cocked his head to get a better look. I must have passed inspection, because he posed for photo after photo. Only with great reluctance did I finally pull away and head back toward the Zodiac for the return to ship.
End of the Voyage to the End of the World
By late morning, the Stella Australis docked at our final destination, Punta Arenas, Chile. Once the most prosperous city in Patagonia, the port of call for every exploration around Cape Horn, the city suffered when the Panama Canal opened and greatly reduced ship traffic through the port. Fortunately, tourism and passenger ships are breathing new life into this beautiful Patagonian port city. As we disembarked, the crew of the Stella Australis was already preparing the ship for the next group of adventurers who would board here in Punta Arenas and reverse navigate the straits and fjords back to Ushuaia. I wished I could join them.
You can find more information about the Stella Australis here: https://www.australis.com/site/en/why-australis/our-fleet/stella-australis/
Hi Clay, What an excellent remembrance of our time on Stella Australis and all the wonders we saw. We’ve enjoyed reading your journal and also experiencing the trip with you and Carolyn. Thank you for sharing and I’ll try to figure out how to access travel blog for more. Patagonia will stay with us for a long time.
Thank you, your words and photos do it justice in a way I could only aspire to.
Hi Clay: I loved your words and photos. Reading your account reminded me of so many wonderful times we had on this trip. I feel I am constantly reliving the journey we took every time I look at the pictures. Thank you, Alice Deese
We are hoping to make a similar voyage in the next few years. Thanks for your vivid descriptions, and for marking the trail for our future travels. Hope it will still be accessible. Best always,
John + Beth
That was Beautiful!! I never thought I would see anything like that, to my surprise I loved it. As cold as it is here and snowing on Mother’s day…I love every word you write you bring me to places I’de never go. I love you guys Miss you!!
Hello Clay:
I so enjoyed your travel adventure. I was just amazed at the photography and your delightful descriptions.
Best Wishes,
Cookie
Good morning Clay. Thank you so much for including us to receive this wonderful travelogue of our journey together. Your photos are outstanding and you include lots of details in your writing that Guy and I have forgotten (we’re finally seeing the end of our crazy and stressful sell house/move into apartment/buy another house scenario!). I can never see enough of the gorgeous scenery!
Libby Fisher
Loved the photos and beautiful writing of your adventure. Made my morning! Although I wasn’t with you, Thursday’s Child brought me closer to this wonderful place. Thanks, Clay
Thank you, Ginny. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
I loved this journey, especially the penguins. They are just irresistible. I wonder if these are the kind of penguins I saw in Galapagos.
Clay, your writing swept me right into the journey. I am smiling!