Buenos Aires to Lima

A 21-Day Cruise around the Horn

We headed directly into the teeth of the Horn. Cape Horn, the
southernmost tip of South America, where the raw power of the
Atlantic and Pacific square off in a never-ending battle of watery
domination. The insufferable howling winds, the monstrous
waves white with drunken foam, the icy squalls that numb you
to the bone. And the ice, oh lord the ice! It’s the only place on
earth where all the lies about the weather are true.

Ok, ok so I was fantasizing. But the adrenaline was starting to

flow! Captain Fichet Delavault had just announced over the
speaker system that we would be rounding the fabled landmark
in an hour, and I was anxiously awaiting sailing in the wake of
such great seamen and adventurers as Drake, Magellan,
FitzRoy, and Cooke.

I think it was in high school Latin class that first got me

interested in Cape Horn. I was always dreaming about places at
the other end of the world in that class. So a few months back
when my wife suggested we take a once-in-a-lifetime cruise
from Buenos Aires to Lima, Peru, going around the Horn, I
jumped.

In a nutshell, our itinerary was to set off from Buenos Aires,

make a detour to the Falklands, round the Horn, then slide up
the coast of Chile, ending 21 days later at Lima, where we would
take a side trip to Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas.

Although several cruise ships do this itinerary, we booked a

cabin on the Regent Seven Seas Mariner because of its
reputation, and because famed ocean explorer and
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conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau of the Ocean Futures

Society would be onboard giving lectures.

“Iceberg on the starboard side,” an announcement came from

the bridge the second day out from Buenos Aires, causing
everyone in the dining rooms to abandon their Italian proscuitto
and scurry to the observation deck. By iceberg standards, it was
on the smallish side, but somewhere in the computers of the
International Ice Patrol this little berg at Latitude 45 degrees
south, Longitude 59 degrees west, was probably cataloged,
classified and tracked.

Falkland Islands

“And for god sake don’t anyone say the M-word,”

someone remarked wryly the third day out as we came ashore
on the Falklands, referring to the fact there’s no bloody love lost
between the Falklanders, who are basically Brits, and the
Argentines, who steadfastly refer to the islands by the Spanish
(Islas) Malvinas.

The Falklands made world headlines in 1982 when Argentine

forces invaded it in the latest struggle for sovereignty. After the
Argentines were driven out, the 2500 Falklanders and a couple
zillion sheep went back to living their normal, tranquil lives.
Nowadays, the islands are becoming a favorite stop for cruise
ships going around the Horn or to Antarctica. Visitors can see
rookeries of penguins, elephant seals, sea lions, and several
varieties of birds, such as albatross and caracara. One can also
drop in one of several British-type pubs in the capital of Stanley
for some fish and chips, which we did.

The Honest to Goodness Truth about the Horn

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One could overhear the mutterings of some passengers hoping

for rough seas when the Mariner rounded the Horn in order to
get a “good Horn experience” for their money. One suspects
the thousands of seamen who went to Davy Jones’ Locker over
the past 500 years in these treacherous seas would be more
than a little perplexed at such sentiments, but as luck would
have it the weather was rough: 70 mph headwinds and heavy
seas! What a day! Pretty much everyone on the ship, with
maybe the exception of Captain Delavault, was ecstatic.

“Take the darn picture,” my wife yelled in not exactly those

words as she braced herself against the wind as I tried to snap
her picture with the legendary black rock in the background.

After making it around the Horn, Captain Fichet Delavault

quickly navigated the Mariner out of the windy Drake Passage
into a protected channel of Tierra del Fuego and headed for
Ushuaia.
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Ushuaia

Ushuaia (You-SWHY-ya), Argentina, lies on the Beagle Channel, a

glacier-lined channel named for the ship H.M.S. Beagle that
sailed these waters in the 1830s. The Beagle was made famous
by a young man in his twenties who accompanied her, who,
according to his uncle, was “fond of natural history." The young
man was Charles Darwin, who was the ship's naturalist and
whose duty it was to observe and collect anything worthy. It was
during these voyages that Darwin observed the vast panorama
of South American life, both living and extinct, that set him on
the road to The Origin of the Species.

Ushuaia is the southernmost town on earth (beating out the

southernmost towns in South Africa, Tasmania, and New
Zealand), and proudly calls itself the “town at the-end-of-the-
world.” At least that’s the impression we got from all the tourist
shops that stock “end-of-the-world” t-shirts, “end-of-the-world”
paper weights, and other collectable items with “end-of-the-
world” printed on them. We even saw the “end-of-the-world”
McDonalds in Punta Arenas, Chile 200, miles to the north. A sign
read “The Southest [their word, not mine] McDonalds in the
World”. We were curious how their burgers compared with
those in the good old U.S. of A.

“You’re probably eating guinea pig,” my wife said, alluding to an

Andean delicacy, as I took a bite out of my Big Mac.

After rounding the Horn, most cruise ships don’t go directly west
into the Pacific, but go northward through the channels and
passageways of Tierra del Fuego, eventually passing through
the Strait of Magellan, the body of water which separates the
South American continent to the north from the Tierra del Fuego
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archipelago to the south. Ferdinand Magellan discovered the

Strait in 1520, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the
planet.

Splendor of the Andes: Chilean Archipelago

The Chilean Archipelago is one of the wonders of the world and

not to be missed by travelers to South America. I know because
someone read it out loud from a book while downing a
cappuccino in the observation lounge.

After threading the Mariner through a myriad of islands and

passageways that make up Tierra del Fuego, Captain Fichet
Delavault navigated the Mariner into Pacific waters and the
Chilean Archipelago, a breathtaking wilderness of hanging
glaciers, snow-covered Andean peaks, and crystal-blue fjords
that run 1,000 miles up the Chilean coast. (A thousand miles up
the Chilean coast is nothing for Chile, its north-south distance is
some 3,000 miles, or the distance from Havana to Hudson Bay.)
Here in Chile’s inside passage, waterfalls cascade thousands of
feet off vertical canyon walls while dozens of species of birds,
including the near extinct giant condor, can be seen riding the
updrafts.

Chiloe’s Gift to the World

Before the Spanish arrived, there were over 1,000 different

kinds of native potatoes on the island of Chiloe (Chil-O-e) Island,
just off the Chilean mainland. Today, there are only 200
varieties left, but local groups of women farmers “caretakers of
the seeds” are working to rescue and conserve this valuable
heritage of biodiversity. I also know this to be true since I read it
on a postcard in a Chiloe museum.
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“It is not uncommon for Chilotes to eat mashed, boiled and

French fried potatoes for a single meal,” our Chiloan guide Pilar
told us on a tour of the island. “We love potatoes. The oldest
strain of potatoes comes from right here on Chiloe,” she added.
“It’s the Garden of Eden of the potato.”

Cuzco: Capital of the Incas

After arriving in Lima and strolling around the central plaza and
soaking up enough Spanish baroque cathedrals to last a lifetime,
we took a plane ride over the Andes to the ancient Inca capital
of Cuzco. Flying to Cuzco is an experience in itself. You rise to
30,000 feet to pierce the clouds, cross over sharp-peaked, snow-
covered Andean mountains, then suddenly below you see brown
dirt, green fields, and terraced farms with rows and rows of (you
guessed it) potatoes. Then the plane lands, and you step out on
the tarmac and realize you are out of breath. You are at 11,800
feet above sea level.

Five hundred years ago, Cuzco was the center of the earth for
the Inca Empire which ran 3,000 miles along the Andean spine
from what is now Columbia all the way to central Chile, which is
the Inca word for end-of-the-earth. (We saw a lot of end-of-the-
earths on this trip.) Then came 1532 and the arrival of
Francisco Pizarro. He had fewer than 200 men, but with the help
of horses (never seen by the Incas), crude guns, an Inca civil
war, small pox, shrewdness, and just dumb luck, seized
everything of value and subjugated the entire Inca Empire of 10
million people. (The conquistadors viewed the Incas as
barbarians for their practice of human sacrifice, and preferred to
shed blood in the more traditional European manner of warfare
and enslavement.)
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Today, the inhabitants of Cuzco are mostly Quechua-speaking

descendents of the Incas. We wandered down cobblestone
streets flanked by the original Inca walls overlaid with Spanish
architecture, where atop the Inca foundations rests the finest
Spanish baroque buildings anywhere in the Americas.

“Do I have to pay for the llama, too?” I protested to a bowler-

hatted Quechua woman attired in the traditional brightly-colored
petticoat and poncho. She had a baby strapped to her back
and stood next to what I assumed to be her pet llama. People
attired in native costume charge to have their picture taken, but
I drew the line at paying a modeling fee for the llama. But I
gave in and gave her $3 for the three of them. Then she
pointed to a dog that just wandered by, so I shell out another $1.
My wife rolled her eyes.

“That picture better turn out,” she said.

Machu Picchu

"I suddenly found myself in a maze of beautiful granite houses.

They were covered with moss and the growth of centuries, but
among bamboo thickets and tangled vines could be seen walls
of white granite, carefully cut and exquisitely pieced together."

… Hiram Bingham, July 24, 1911

So wrote Yale historian Hiram Bingham on his discovery of

Machu Picchu in 1911.

“I wish someone would play El Condor Pasa,” someone said,

alluding to the haunting Andean folk song. We stood at the
classic overview of the Lost City of the Incas, Machu Picchu,
arguably the most beautiful place on earth. Everyone found it
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impossible to think of words to describe it. Finally, someone

said, “It looks just like the picture in National Geographic.”

It is believed that Machu Picchu was built in the 1400s shortly

before the conquistadors arrived. The conquistadors never
found Machu Picchu because it was abandoned before they
arrived and located in a remote valley. The Incas did not have a
written language so archeologists can only speculate the
purpose of the city. Some believe it had astronomical
significance.

Two days later found us on a five-hour flight from Lima to Miami.

As our Boeing 737 circled over Lima I looked eastward over the
high Andes, and started to think what lay beyond: the Amazon
jungle. I was thinking it would be nice to return.

- the end -