Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [5]
PART I
EXPLORATION
THE CHANGING LAND ON THE EAST COAST
1. BRAZIL
A Chaos of Delights
I do not know what epithet such scenery deserves: beautiful is much too tame; every form, every colour is such a complete exaggeration of what one has ever beheld before. If it may be so compared, it is like one of the gayest scenes in the Opera House or Theatre.
—BEAGLE DIARY, JUNE 1, 1832
BRAZIL IS THE KIND OF PLACE where you feel something’s happening that’s absolutely delightful and fascinating and completely foreign to everything you know, only you can’t quite grasp what it is. That weird paranoia is amplified by the stunningly disorienting scenery of places like Rio de Janeiro, where huge, smooth cones of rock swoop up and down, clad in a thriving blend of palms, ferns, cactuses, and scrubby bushes, while the glittering jumble of city runs right up to—even into—famous mountain landmarks rising out of the water.
I started my voyage with Brazil because that’s where Darwin started his and because it was that exhilarating landscape that stood out most in his mind as he reflected on his trip later, as an old man. Also, as I soon found out, there was an easy comparison to make between Darwin’s take on the new nature around him and my own adrenaline-fueled excitement at Brazil’s crazily, incomprehensibly, wonderfully different city landscape.
The feeling I was missing something only increased as I tried to adjust to Brazilian social life. A functional grasp of Spanish couldn’t get me beyond “Hello, how are you?, The dog is green” conversations in Portuguese. I was bunking down in a cramped youth hostel in Botafogo and had trouble connecting with my hostel mates, who tended to divide into camps of 1) fluent Portuguese speakers from Europe and North America who had immersed themselves in Brazilian life and did things like teaching in schools and looking down upon us ignorant gringos, 1a) not-yet-fluent Portuguese speakers who were dating Brazilians and looked down on us ignorant gringos, and 2) blissfully ignorant gringos whose knowledge of Brazil started and stopped with an aesthetic appreciation of the thong bikini.
For dorm roommates I had drawn a preening, chiseled German and an aloof Frenchman. The German liked to strut around the room in a Speedo and, while admiring his rippling bronzed abs, lecture us about the club scene in heavily accented Tarzan-style English. “So there is this place I went to last night where the cover was 120 reales,” he told us. The Frenchman raised an eyebrow at the cost, to which the German quickly added, “But you can drink up to 100 of it. And it is worth it just to see it. They have the most beautiful girls there.”
The floor near the German’s bed was littered with wrinkled-up napkins used to capture names and phone numbers. “Flavia,” whose napkin had blown over in my direction and lay face up on the floor, had taken the time to write hearts around her number.
When the German took an interest in what I was doing in Brazil, however, I left him baffled by saying I wanted to go to the Tijuca National Park.
“What’s that?”
“Hiking,” I said. “In the rainforest, in the mountains. Want to come?”
“Oh no,” he said. “Not for me. I’m going to the beach again. Have you seen the girls on the beach?” He clicked his tongue and gave me a thumbs-up.
Both roommates were asleep—Tarzan sprawled out in his briefs, sheet pushed away—when I tiptoed out early on a gray, humid Thursday morning. Botafogo was a one-time suburb of Rio where Darwin had taken a cottage to use as a peaceful base for trips into the surrounding jungle, and