Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [39]
Finally, triumphantly, both Uruguay and California had somehow ended up with suburban tract-home blight on top of many of those pastoral ranches. “Going north from Punta you will pass some of the finest residential areas in South America,” one Uruguayan tourist website proclaimed. “This area of the Maldonado Region is a ‘must see’ for tourists and visitors. Golf and tennis clubs can also be found in this vicinity.”
Golf! Tennis! Uruguay!
Montevideo was a comfortably nice place, with tree-lined shady streets, old Victorian-looking houses, and an air of quiet retirement about it. Nathan and I strolled around for a while and ended up reclining on a grassy lawn at the edge of the Plata, basking in late afternoon sunshine and a sea breeze, lazily watching a few dozen men on a rocky breakwater as they pulled flashing silver fish out of the brown water. Shrewsbury-native Darwin may have found this a “great air of wealth & business,” but for us, it looked a lot like a bigger, more populated suburb of the rest of the sleeping country. A rugby team was practicing on the lawn next to us, running formations, tossing the ball from one end of the line to the other as they ran from end to end, and I felt a soothing sense of home. The grass and the fishing and the sports could just as well have been set in any marina in the San Francisco Bay.
But while I slid down the grass and relaxed into the slow-paced, somehow familiar Uruguayan rhythm, Nathan ground his teeth and openly despaired of ever finding seediness and wild hedonism again. “This is a capital city,” he said, through set jaw. “There must be nightlife somewhere.” In Montevideo, Darwin had attended a grand ball to celebrate the reestablishment of the president. “It was a much gayer scene than I should have thought this place could have produced,” he wrote.
While I was visiting Nathan in England—the first time I’d seen him since our paths had diverged in South America and I’d discovered Darwin—we compared notes and talked about the naturalist’s take on Uruguay. I read the bit about the grand ball out loud. “He found a party?” Nathan asked, incredulous. “Where? How? Can we find it still?”
The partygoers, Darwin reported, were finely dressed —the women in particular—and he expressed his amazement that even the lowest classes of society were allowed into the theater to observe the dancing. “And nobody ever seemed to imagine the possibility of disorderly conduct on their parts,” he marveled. “How different are the habits of Englishmen, on such Jubilee nights!”
A determined Nathan, ready to uphold his country’s reputation, burst out onto the Uruguayan streets that night. The hostel operator looked surprised. “We lock the doors at midnight,” she said quietly.
For a while, we blundered around the dark residential streets. We found a few restaurants, some cheerily lit pizza joints, and some shuttered office buildings. As Nathan got increasingly worried that there really might not be any bars in all of Montevideo, we reached the older part of town, with narrow pedestrian-only streets that reflected the lights from a few open doors. Suddenly, we came to a swinging green sign for “The Shannon.”
“Irish pub,” I read.
Nathan swerved. We had stumbled into the capital’s bar sector, with four or five different bars serving up music and drinks, and Nathan, back in his element, looking like he had finally found his ideal place to settle down, was hesitant to leave. “It’s like Irish bars everywhere,” he said, gratefully gulping his beer. “Guinness, dark wood, no actual Irish people. It’s absolutely