Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [37]
7: LA PLATA
In Darwin’s Muddy Footsteps
The other day we landed our men here & took possession at the request of the inhabitants of the central fort. We Philosophers do not bargain for this sort of work and I hope there will be no more.
—LETTER TO A FRIEND, AUGUST 18, 1832
NO ONE TRAVELS TO BE BORED. But without the structured to-do lists of home, it’s an inevitable part of any trip. I’d guess that boredom is the most common, most universal of all traveling emotions. To combat it, travelers review and relive their few moments of glorious excitement by writing in journals (Darwin) or blogging for hours in Internet cafés (not Darwin). They think deep thoughts, and ponder philosophical and political questions, as Darwin did about slavery while lying indisposed in his hammock in Bahia. Or if they’re like my English friend Nathan, they lash against the constraints of inactivity like netted fish. Traveling with Nathan was never boring.
The tiny Atlantic coast country of Uruguay is boring, in the nicest sort of way. It’s clean, peaceful, tranquil, and scenic but not remarkably so. For Darwin, who spent several months wandering around on the north banks of the Rio de la Plata, Uruguay was at best a decent opportunity to practice his Spanish. “I never saw so quiet, so deserted looking a place,” Darwin wrote in his journal, about the eastern part of the country. “After pacing for some weeks the planck decks, one ought to be grateful for the pleasure of treading on the green elastic turf, although the surrounding view in both cases is equally uninteresting.”
For Nathan, I think, three days in Uruguay nearly killed him.
I didn’t make it to Uruguay while following Darwin. But Nathan and I had been there before. When I reviewed that trip later, as I read The Voyage of the Beagle for the first time, the parallels between our three days bouncing along the Plata and Darwin’s experiences leaped out at me almost the same way the story of the Darwin’s rhea had.
I had met up with Nathan in Buenos Aires, where I had just landed, and where for the last few weeks he’d been an active conspirator in the nightlife at one of the most scandalous and legendary youth hostels on the continent. Although there was a particular Spanish language instructor he had in mind, the entire city had caught his eye.
Buenos Aires is an incredibly aesthetic city: beautiful people in beautiful clothes eating beautiful food from beautiful dinner plates in beautiful buildings. Walking the streets in the morning I would be passed by tall, thin businessmen and women strutting off to work in fashionable suits. The city seemed to be populated by energetic 30-something business people straight out of Hollywood casting central, the kind of people you always see working in advertising firms in romantic comedies. To my alarm, I discovered that Nathan had bought new shoes, a new jacket and a few new dressy shirts, He had also joined a gym and now kept up a daily exercise regimen that included brisk jogging around the park, and he was concentrating enough on his Spanish lessons (that instructor—not only pretty and fashionable, but a good teacher!) that he’d chucked his charming disregard for the language out with his old clothes. And then he’d turned into a zombie by trying to skip sleep for three weeks.
Darwin, who spent very little time in Buenos Aires, sounded something like everyone else in the hostel. (Or rather, they sounded like him.) “The whole town has more of an European look than any I have seen in S. America,” he wrote after one trip. (“The Paris of South America!” modern guidebooks proclaim.) Like my hostel mates, Darwin found little to do except roam the streets admiring the finely dressed women. “Our chief amusement,” he wrote to his sister Caroline, “was riding about & admiring the Spanish Ladies. After watching one of these angels gliding down the streets; involuntarily we groaned out, ‘how foolish English women are, they can neither walk nor dress.’ And then how ugly Miss sounds after Signorita; I am sorry for you all; it would do