00:00There's a stretch of water that even the most experienced explorers fear.
00:04No matter what season you choose to cross it in, you risk meeting face-to-face with
00:09waves that can reach as tall as the Hollywood sign.
00:13I'm talking about the Drake Passage, the waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean to the
00:18Atlantic Ocean, stretching from Cape Horn at South America's southernmost tip to Antarctica's
00:24South Shetland Islands.
00:26It's about as wide as the distance from London to Berlin and takes up to 48 hours to cross.
00:33Some sailors compare getting on the other side to going to the moon.
00:37That's how challenging it is.
00:39Even the man who discovered it, Sir Francis Drake, never sailed these waters because they
00:43seemed too dangerous to him and opted for a calmer, although longer, Strait of Magellan.
00:50The passage took the lives of around 20,000 sailors and over 800 ships.
00:55Many who want to see Antarctica cross the Drake Passage on a regular basis, although
01:00it's still often called the world's most terrifying ocean crossing.
01:06The Antarctic Peninsula, where travelers go, isn't really part of Antarctica itself.
01:12It sticks out and points towards South America like two fingers almost touching it.
01:17The water gets squeezed between these two landmasses, making strong ocean currents.
01:22The passage is part of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the largest ocean current on Earth.
01:29The water rushes through the passage at a speed between 95 and 150 million cubic meters
01:35per second, which makes it rougher.
01:38And then there are winds that usually blow from west to east and are very strong between
01:4340 and 60 degrees latitude.
01:46That's why those areas are called the Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties.
01:53Land slows down winds, which is why storms hitting Ireland and the UK get weaker as they
01:58move east.
01:59But Drake's latitude is the only place where winds can blow all around the Earth without
02:04being stopped by land, so they keep getting faster.
02:09These strong winds turn into huge waves that can hit ships really hard, normally around
02:1513 to 16 feet tall.
02:17They're much higher than waves in the Atlantic.
02:21Drake Passage also has underwater mountains that you can't see.
02:25The huge current squeezes through this narrow passage and causes waves to crash against
02:30these mountains underwater.
02:33These internal waves create whirls that bring cold water up from the deep ocean.
02:38So it's not just rough on the surface, the water is wild all the way down.
02:44The first sailor managed to sail around Cape Horn and through the Drake Passage in 1616.
02:50It was a Dutch navigator, Willem Schouten, in 1616.
02:54But the most famous attempt to cross it was undertaken by Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton
02:58on his ship named Endurance.
03:01He and 27 of his men set off from South Georgia, aiming to reach Vassal Bay in Antarctica.
03:08But things didn't go as planned.
03:10On January 19, 1915, their ship got stuck in the ice.
03:16And by October, it began to sink.
03:18They camped on floating ice for two months before sailing lifeboats to a remote, icy
03:24place called Elephant Island.
03:26Shackleton and five men made a risky journey to South Georgia to get help.
03:32It took them 15 days to cross Drake Passage with hurricane winds.
03:36Finally, they arrived safely and organized a rescue for the rest of their crew.
03:42Scientists found the shipwreck of Endurance only in 2022, 10,000 feet below the water.
03:49In December of 2019, six fearless athletes decided to cross the Drake Passage by rowing
03:56a boat for the first time in history.
03:59It took them 12 days of non-stop rowing with a 90-minute rotation of rowers.
04:05They managed to do it, and it was probably the hardest possible way to cross the passage.
04:10The athletes mentioned it was cold, wet, and dirty, and the waves hit them like walls.
04:16The weather in the Drake Passage changes a lot, but ship captains can always see it coming
04:21and change their path.
04:23They will move the departure time to have a safety margin and not to get stuck in the
04:27middle of the passage in the worst possible conditions.
04:31Sometimes the journey will be smooth and calm, and they call it Drake Lake.
04:35Other times, people on the ship will feel rough waves, which is called Drake Shake.
04:41Some experienced captains who often cross the passage say that the Drake Lake effect
04:46happens once in every ten crossings, and they see the Drake Shake once or twice in every
04:52ten journeys.
04:54A scooter or a kayak will probably not survive the journey among giant waves, but modest
04:59vessels and cruise ships have sturdy hulls and advanced stabilizing mechanisms.
05:04So the journey isn't that dangerous anymore, but still, it's quite an adventure, especially
05:10if you're seasick.
05:12If you don't feel like risking it but want to travel from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic
05:16Ocean by water the fast way, the Panama Canal is waiting for you!
05:21People first started thinking about making a water path across Panama in the 16th century.
05:26Back then, a Spanish explorer found out that only a thin piece of land separated the two
05:32oceans.
05:33But it seemed impossible to build it because of the mountains and thick jungle, so the
05:37idea had to wait a couple of centuries.
05:40Finally, in 1880, France, led by the man who built the Suez Canal in Egypt, tried to make
05:46the canal.
05:48But the people who started the construction soon found out it was much harder than it
05:52looked on a map.
05:54The land in Panama was one of the toughest and most dangerous places to dig a big waterway.
06:00Workers had to literally move huge mountains in a jungle full of snakes, where it was really
06:06hot and rainy.
06:08During the wet season, heavy rains turned rivers into wild rapids and soaked the workers.
06:13Sometimes, they didn't see the sun for two weeks, and their clothes stayed wet all the
06:18time.
06:19Big rocks were falling and tiny mosquitoes that carried malaria made people very sick.
06:25And then, an earthquake happened on top of everything.
06:28They were losing thousands of people.
06:30That's why France decided to abandon the project after seven years.
06:35Then the United States bought the French assets in the canal zone and finished it by 1914.
06:41It cost the US around $375 million.
06:46The 50-mile-long passage of water saves ships traveling between New York and San Francisco
06:517,872 miles.
06:55Around 14,000 ships use it every year and pay around $1.8 million in tolls.
07:02So it looks like it all paid off!
07:05Another challenging waterway in this part of the world is the Amazon River.
07:09It's around 4,300 miles long and flows through three countries with over 30 million people
07:15living in its basin.
07:17But there isn't a single bridge across it.
07:20The river has many marshes and soft soils, so engineers would need to build very long
07:25bridges and very deep foundations, which costs a lot of money.
07:30Building bridges over deep water is tough, but in other places in the world, engineers
07:35can use things like floating platforms to help.
07:38The river's path and water levels change a lot during the year.
07:42During the dry season from June to November, the river is usually two to six miles wide.
07:48But in the wet season from December to April, the river can become as wide as 30 miles,
07:54and the water level can rise by 50 feet.
07:57That's why they can't build floating bridges or pontoons.
08:01The riverbanks are made of soft dirt that moves and erodes with the seasons, and it
08:05makes things even harder.
08:08It would have to be an absolutely unique project to overcome all these challenges.
08:13Luckily, there's no pressing need for a bridge across the Amazon right now.
08:18The river mostly goes through areas that are sparsely populated, so there aren't so many
08:23major roads to be connected by bridges.
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