Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [18]
I wandered back up the main street, San Martín, which runs from the highway down to the bay. It is really the only street in town—the roads are paved for about two blocks on each side of it and beyond that it’s dirt and gravel and low cement houses. In the middle of the block I found another tourist information office, and although I didn’t see anyone, the door was open.
Inside, there was an empty desk with a computer and a letter-sized printed report with the title: “What are we doing about tourism?” The cover had a picture of Rodin’s “Thinker.” After walking around in the wind, it was startlingly quiet in the office. The large windows had a view up the mostly empty street.
In the other room of the office, I found a woman sitting at a desk.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for something to do.”
She smiled and nodded knowingly. She looked tired. She handed me a brochure that I’d already been given by the receptionist at the hostería municipal (my hotel, the descriptively named, “municipal hotel”), showing sites of interest that included all four restaurants in town (all four of which were closed), the bus terminal, the tourist information office, the police, and a few hotels (most of which were also closed).
“I noticed that the museum was closed,” I said.
“Yes. The museum is closed.”
“Will it open?”
“No. It’s closed.”
I pondered this for a minute. There went half my plan for the day. “It seems,” I ventured slowly, “like there aren’t many tourists around.”
She shook her head sadly. “No.” It sounded very tragic, the way she said it.
“So,” I said. “What do people do here for work?”
“Most of them work in administration,” she said.
That made sense. The only buildings I’d seen open were social security offices and banks. But it still didn’t help me plan the rest of my day.
“So,” I said, returning to my theme. “What can I do?”
“You could go to the archaeological museum,” she said hopefully. She gave me another brochure and pointed it out on the map. “You could go to the nautical museum, but that’s also closed. But you could take pictures, or look at it from the outside.”
I didn’t mention that I’d already tried both places. I told her that I was researching Darwin. Was there anyone I might talk to?
She thought for a minute. “Pablo Walker,” she said. “You can find him at the university.”
I went to the university to look for Pablo Walker.
The university was about the size of my elementary school, one story tall and painted a kind of pale mint green. I asked after Pablo Walker at the reception desk.
The receptionist eyed me suspiciously and asked me to wait while she checked. She disappeared through the cafeteria and returned a minute later. “Follow me,” she said.
She led me through the empty cafeteria—the kind of multipurpose, vinyl-floored auditorium we had at my junior high school—past a small room marked “Professors” on the door and consisting of a single desk, bookshelf, and two computers. We walked through another short hallway and entered a classroom that had about thirty small desks pushed together into the corner. A larger desk in the center of the room supported two computers wired to some video editing equipment. Three men sat around, staring at monitors. The receptionist waved me in and went back to her desk.
One of the men stood up when I walked in. He was wearing a black sweater vest over a white T-shirt and faded, dusty, cuffed blue jeans. His hair was gray and brown and parted into a wave that soared off the top of his wrinkled forehead. He was wearing thick