It was the screaming sixties staring them down their face now, bellowing gusts tearing at the canvas sails and tugging at the ropes. Waves rising up to 30m threatened to capsize their flimsy contraption of wood stranded in this frothing, bubbling cauldron of blue. The passing was cursed they murmured, eyes cast overhead on the swooping albatrosses awaiting to collect their souls to heaven.

This image from the 19th and 20th century seems strangely at odds with the serene calm pulled over Cape Horn of Chile in a rare moment of cooperation. At this point where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet, the Tierra del Fuego archipelago resembles the scaled back of an emerald serpent. The image is at odds with the wild tempest visitors are often warned about, sniggering gales rushing down from the icy fields of Patagonia’s coastal mountains. Granted the summer sun is a good luck omen blazing down and illuminating the slowly drifting cruise ships approaching for a pitstop. Cape Horn is known for more than just its chance juxtaposition of tropical greens against slate gray, being the starting point for Charles Darwin’s exploration of the Andean ecosystem. An island so thriving with life, maybe ‘the Start of the World’ is a more fitting name for this promontory.