Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [71]
Then he looked out the window.
“Demon cactuses!” he yelped immediately. “Oh my God!”
A grove of long-armed cactuses leaned along the road, bristling with lengthy, scary spines. “Unbeknownst to most horticulturalists,” Josh trembled, “there are actually three kinds of saguaro. Those with short spines, those with long spines, and the holy shit! variety.”
Cactuses are not my kind of plant. I fell into a cactus once, face first, on a family trip to Arizona. Enough for me; I’ll stick to ferns and wildflowers. But Josh had more to say about the spines and rather extended himself on the subject. They reminded him of convergent evolution, where different species in different-but-similar places respond by evolving the same adaptations. They reminded him of cactuses in the American southwest. Could they be related? They looked related. He wondered how cactuses would have made it here. Or did they start out here? How would a cactus walk from South America to North America? Were these really related to saguaro cactuses? Had they been introduced? Was there a Johnny Cactusseed who traveled the world, distributing columnar plants with, as Josh called it, “spines that would make an iron maiden look like a deck chair”? It was an inspired, entertaining monologue. Josh is now on his way to becoming a professor, and to all his prospective students, let me just say that you are lucky. Ask him about cactuses.
Meanwhile we piddled along past tranquil little villages so cute they ought to have starred in Disney movies. The sun beamed down through clear desert air and pure blue sky. A gentle breeze kept the temperature warm, not hot. The glare reflected on glowing crimson-and-gold vineyards along the river and lit up the pink rocks. Tiny adobe houses with driftwood posts grew out of the hillsides, their boundaries marked by explosions of fragrant purple flowers and blooming jasmine. “We passed through several small villages; the valley was beautifully cultivated & the whole scenery very grand,” Darwin wrote.
Josh and I wanted to find the spot where Darwin turned around and recorded that observation, in the Coquimbo valley “where the R. Claro joins the Elque.” We understood this would be the meeting of the Claro and Elqui Rivers, but depending on the map, that meeting place changed. On some maps the Elqui stopped halfway down a narrow branching valley, on others the Rio Claro was formed by the junction of the Elqui and the Rio Turbio flowing out of the Andes, and on still other maps the Rio Claro itself trickled clear back to the cordillera. We asked three different strangers on the street and got three different answers, and decided to just drive along and see for ourselves. Maybe, like Darwin, we could inspect the haciendas and mines along the way.
We passed river junction candidate one—the odds-on favorite—where the Coquimbo valley split off into the Elqui valley and turned south to follow a narrow road up the Elqui valley. Two more possibilities followed, but neither seemed impressive enough to be the meeting of two rivers. By this point, the valley was only a quarter-mile wide and the streams flowing through it were small and lined with rushes. The canyon walls closed in on the road, which wound side to side, seeking out level spots wherever possible. A few houses clung to the slopes. “It’s cool how all the things here look baked,” Josh said. “Houses, land, trees . . .”
“People,” I interjected, as we passed a shirtless, tanned man hugging a shady spot along the road.
After half an hour we arrived in Pisco Elqui at the far tip of the valley, almost certainly beyond where Darwin traveled. We stumbled out of the car and went to inspect the town. It was adorable. The odd-sounding Pisco Elqui was not its original name, we discovered. Originally, the town was called La Unión. Then politics got in the way, and not just any kind of politics: Alcohol politics. We knew that Chile and its neighbor to the north, Peru, both claimed to have invented a kind of grape brandy known as pisco. Peru, Chile noted enviously, even had a town named Pisco.