VOYAGE TO THE END OF THE EARTH> Man-humbling scenery of Cape Horn a world unto itself

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It was 5:30 a.m. when we headed topside. Winds were howling and flags snapping, and soon we were getting pushed up and down the deck by the predawn gusts.

Welcome to the temperamental southern tip of South America. Our cruise ship, the all-suite Seabourn Pride, had just entered the tricky Strait of Magellan, a wind-lashed passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which Captain-General Ferdinand Magellan discovered Oct. 21, 1520, during his quest to find a western route to Asia’s Spice Islands.

We didn’t hit the windy Strait of Magellan until day seven of our voyage to the end of the earth. Yet, from the very start to the finish of this 20-day cruise, adventures galore kept coming our way.

Our voyage began in Rio, and five days later, we’re scanning the shores of Patagonia, a region in Argentina where I know I’m going to be doing some staring at the feet of the locals. Magellan did. He even ended up giving the place its name: “Patagonia” is derived from the name Magellan called the native Indians, “patagones,” Spanish for “big feet.”

As we’re pulling into the Patagonian harbor of Puerto Madryn, passengers are at the rails, oohing and aahing. I’ve never seen a stranger dockside welcome wagon. Sea lions! The fat brown creatures are sunning themselves all over the dock.

Waiting also for us on the dock was the friendly face of Emilia, our guide who was ready to whisk us off to Punta Tombo, a penguin rookery of one million residents.

“This is the typical Patagonian landscape,” explains Emilia, pointing out the bus window. It could have been Nevada — no trees, lots of thorn bushes, an ocean of desert, all under a huge brilliant blue sky and a 60-degree temperature.

Suddenly, everywhere I look I see Magellanic penguins. It’s a penguin metropolis. We hop off the bus, and now we hear them, too. I wonder: Is every penguin here braying at the top of its lungs? We set off down a path with penguins waddling along with us. We pass penguins preening, penguins lounging in their burrows and penguins taking a dip in the sea. Only about 18-inches tall, these unafraid creatures allowed us within a few feet of them.

“You’ve had a good day to visit,” says Emilia who, by the way, had small feet. “Most times we can only spend 10 minutes here because of the heavy winds.” We’d stayed a good hour.

In two days, we would start to get a little taste of what Emilia and all the seafaring books mean when they talk about the incredible winds down here, because that’s when we hit the corkscrew Strait of Magellan — and the wind.

For short periods of time, we’d battle the winds up on deck, where a deck steward would offer us a steaming cup of hot chocolate or bouillon. We’d sip and watch the strait unwind under a bird-dotted sky. To the north, stood the Patagonian desert of mainland South America. To the south, stretched the vast forested island of Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire), so named by Magellan because of all the Indian camp fires he spied at night. Today, the only flickers we see come from the oil derricks along the waterway.

By noon, the winds had died down. Soon, I could make out our destination up ahead: the Chilean port of Punta Arenas, the largest town on the strait (population: 100,000). The shore is dotted with crayon-colored roofs. Why such bright roofs? “It cheers up the eyes from all the gray colors of the landscape,” I was told later.

Once on the dock, we’re put into the hands of Maria the guide who immediately points out, “See how clean our city is? — the wind helps a lot. Our winds get up to 95 mph in the winter. But today is one of our very best days of summer.” It’s 55 degrees and a bit breezy. (We are, by the way, visiting during February, summer in the Southern Hemisphere.)

Down here, you can’t help it. Talk always revolves around weather.

Well, the weather may be tough, but the city, one of the richest in Chile, puts on a happy face. Cute houses abound, from gingerbread styles to modern ones with lots of glass. A smiling salesgirl in a market tries to teach us a few helpful words of Spanish. But I’ve never seen so many travel agencies: I guess if the “really rough weather” gets too much to take, you try to escape.

We set sail at 6 p.m. and soon the ship leaves the strait. The next morning we wake up in a different world: on the Beagle Channel. It’s 6:39 a.m. and the green water’s calm as a lake as we glide through a glacial canyon. Towering ice-capped mountains run as far as the eye can see. Soon, blue-white glaciers catch the sun’s first rays, then shine like torches.

As stunning as the Beagle Channel is, it’s also eerie. How isolated and quiet it seems here — no homes, no people, no wildlife, even no birds right now.

Halfway through the Beagle Channel we come upon our next port, Ushuaia (Argentina), the world’s southernmost city (population: 28,000), and a frontier town if there ever was one.

The first sign that we’d gotten ourselves off the beaten path was all the postcards and T-shirts for sale saying, “End of the World.”

Yet within a short time, one thing was clear: We’d set foot in a boom town. This may be the end of the world but you’d never know it by all the billboards and shop windows boasting French perfumes, Italian cosmetics and Japanese electronics. (Ushuaia is a duty-free zone). Every restaurant I peeked into had scrumptious-looking food, especially pastries.

Yet the pioneer spirit is alive and well. Dogs have the run of town, trotting up and down main street. As we strolled up and down main street, our eyes met with every kind of architecture imaginable, from a Swiss chalet to a Nordic-looking church. The post office is the busiest place in town. Tiny houses are engulfed by crops of flowers, thanks to the 20-hours of daylight during the summer.

But you can’t get away from the feeling of remoteness. Everywhere you turn, your eyes fall on the soaring Andes which ring the town, mountains still snow covered in the middle of summer.

Back on the ship, we head still further south. Next morning, it’s 51 degrees and one of our calmest days. At 8 a.m., someone cries, “There it is!”

Some passengers hugged the rails, spellbound. Others couldn’t stop clicking their cameras at the gray hump of Cape Horn, also known as the headland of hazard.

We are at the bottom end of the New World. Ahead of us, to the north, stretched the entire land mass of the Western Hemisphere.

Then, Capt. Daniel Danielsen comes on the public address system: “We can say we’ve made it around Cape Horn.”

Few people ever get to see this fabled headland, smack in the most feared sailing grounds in the world, with the wildest winds and the murderous seas.

To a sailor, the idea of rounding Cape Horn ranks as the ultimate adventure. Novelist Herman Melville had written that any sailor would founder here if the Horn so decided. I guess Cape Horn was in a good mood on the day we visited.

I caught a glimpse of our captain, staring at the Horn. Then I saw him grin. Maybe he was thinking about Captain Bligh, the tough skipper of the HMS Bounty. In 1787, Bligh had tried for 29 days to round the Horn. Finally, Bligh gave up.

A few minutes after Capt. Danielsen signed off the PA, a dark cloud formed over the Horn. The wind picked up. The sea turned a gunmetal gray. The skies opened and mist blanketed the hump. The ship began to rock a little. A lone albatross wheeled above us. Has the Cape stopped being cooperative? Seconds later, the sun’s back out, and a rainbow formed across Cape Horn. We see what old salts mean about the fickle weather down here.

We start heading back up the coast of Argentina.

In two days, we’ll wake up to a welcome in the town of Necochea that wins hands down in any hospitality record books. How often do you find the locals gathering around the gangway, cheering, clapping, even taking photos of the passengers as they disembark?

We’re in gaucho country now, so we hop onto the bus and set off for a 12,000-acre estancia (ranch). By the time the tour is over, we’d watched gauchos show off their daring riding skills aboard horses that could have won beauty contests, then sat down to a sumptuous asado (barbecue).

Still to come were three more ports, each something different: sophisticated Buenos Aires (the Paris of South America), as well as two intriguing ports in Uruguay — the country’s capital of Montevideo and Punta del Este, the Palm Beach of South America. Then the cruise ends back in Rio, “one of the most beautiful harbors in the world,” says Capt. Danielsen.

Clearly, our voyage wasn’t Magellan’s adventure of nearly half a millennium ago. Magellan never had it so good.