at least twice in their life. And all should have read this of the albatross. Surely the most moving animal in existence:
Cape Horn and Tierra Del Fuego: The Southern tip of South America- PART I Megan Moreno June 19, 2019
By Professor Robert Fleming
I am the albatross that waits for you at the end of the world. I am the forgotten souls of dead mariners who passed Cape Horn from all the oceans of the earth. But they did not die in the furious waves. Today they sail on my wings toward eternity, in the last crack of Antarctic winds.
– Sara Vial
A world of wind, waves, and swirling spray is home to the albatrosses of the Southern Ocean, the birds a fitting symbol for the spirits of the many mariners who have perished attempting to sail around Cape Horn (Cabo de Hornos) at the tip of South America. These roiling seas hostmany oceanic birds including petrels, skuas, and shearwaters, but the primier species are albatrosses, their seemingly effortless flight beautifully adapted to the circumpolar winds that continuously blow east between 40 degrees and 60 degrees south latitude. Beneath the ocean’s surface, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current also circles east, little impeded by any land mass except where it has to squeeze through the 800km-wide Drake Passage between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America.
Cape Horn Island as seen when approaching from the south.
Of the 22 species of albatrosses in the world, 18 live here in the south, with many of the birds staying at sea for most of their lives and coming to land only to nest. For example, once a Wandering Albatross, with long, narrow wings that may reach up to 3.5m/11.6ft from tip to tip, has left its natal island the bird may spend four or five years at sea before again touching land. And much of this time is spent aloft, riding the wind currents while occasionally diving down to snatch a morsel from the oceans surface.
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