Kiwi Roa stayed in Ushuaia and Puerto Williams for two winters. We made repeat visits to many of our now familiar and favorite destinations. Below are winter landscape shots from the season, including a tour of the infamous Cape Horn.
Second Winter
The rocky and barren terrain takes on a decorative frosting, contrasting with the dark surroundings. Isla Snipe marks the turn in the passage out of the Beagle on the way to the Horn.
The pass between Isla Picton and Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego is the last before the open ocean. Beyond, the deep south.
This is early morning winter sunshine. Kiwi Roa is en route across the Bahía Nassau, with the snow covered Wollaston Islands in the distance concealing the approaching Horn.
This is not the first time we have been here. Kiwi Roa has rounded the Horn on a number of occasions – some were roundings necessary to the route, others like this done simply for a cruise. The place is magnetic.
The atmospheric weather is more dramatic than that on the water, but it is never far from descending with force.
There is little evidence of human activity. The Chilean Armada keeps a station in the area, but the landscape is mostly untouched. The small beacon on the Horn itself, a light tower some four meters in height, is hardly visible.
As such, the experience can be had – with perhaps a touch of imagination – similar to the clippers of past centuries. The romantic, or sleep deprived, sailor might see ghost ships in the mist.
At once both dynamic and eternally unchanging, this landmark of history and exploration is not going anywhere.
Further west, the Beagle is frozen in time. From the ridge above the Holanda glacier, the fjord runs away to the shining mountains in the far distance which penetrate the sharply clear air.
At Seno Pia and Beaulieu, the solid river of ice continues to crash through the valleys in contempt of the pretensions of shallow snowfall on the surrounding mountain sides.
The glacier is however a little more camoflaged. The natural blue of solid water, crushed and jumbled into tortuous geometries, gives it away.
Most photographs here turn into a study on variations of alpine colors. Nunataks escape the glacier but themselves are capped with ice.
Behind the camera, the ocean stretches out in three directions. Kiwi Roa came from one and has explored a second. Where next?
Staten Island, forming the south-easterly extremity of South America, was the final destination on our Patagonian itinerary. Pictures of its wilderness form the first section of the Staten Island & Falklands Photo Story. Lastly, more photographs of a navigational Cape Horn rounding can be found at the end of the Antarctica Photo Story, on landfall after sailing north across the Drake Passage.