Remember when James Cagney made a dramatic end to the movie, “White Heat”. Chased by the cops, the suicidal, mother-obsessed gangster climbed up a huge oil storage tank and set it afire. Just before it blew up, he yelled, “Top of the world, Ma!”

While on a cruise, we recently visited the lonely little coastal town of Ushuaia, in the Terra del Fuego area of Argentina. It is literally the last civilization at the very lowest tip of South America. And if we had wanted to imitate Cagney, we could have stood there and shouted, “Bottom of the world, Ma!”

Ushuaia is just across the Beagle Channel from the tip of the frozen Antartic region, and has 18 hours of summer daylight. It was a bit strange dining in a local cafe at midnight under the bright sun. In the winter, there are less than eight hours of daylight.