Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [81]
“Well,” the man said, “all of this is Amolanas. It’s all part of the hacienda now. You could ask over by the vineyard houses there.”
Back on the dirt road we found a middle-aged man standing, watching us. By this point we’d driven through the entire town three times. I figured that in exchange for getting to watch us making fools of ourselves, the towns-people owed us some answers. Besides, no one seemed to be doing anything. We had passed the same man three times already, and he hadn’t moved from the post where he lounged, shirtless and in flip-flops.
“Hi,” I said, rolling down the window. “We’re looking for the oldest part of the Amolanas hacienda. Do you know where that is?”
He rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “Hang on,” he said. He disappeared inside a small shack for a few moments and brought out an older man and a young girl, presumably his father and daughter. Gringo-watching: Fun for the whole family.
I repeated the question. “Oh,” he said, “Yes. You need to go back to the main highway, down about 500 meters and then take a left. Ask about Pesenti Oviedo.”
Back on the highway we drove back and forth to scout out the area before deciding that the old man meant a small driveway that led off the road and into a fenced-off residential area. As we idled in front of the gate, a truck pulled up next to us.
“Can we follow you in through the gate?” I asked.
“Yes,” the driver said.
“Is the oldest part of the Amolanas hacienda here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Just go straight.”
So we did. At the end of the driveway loomed a Spanish colonial-style ranch house. Three women sat on the porch, and as we approached, the eldest woman stood up, smoothed her tan skirt, and came smiling to greet us.
“Is this the old Amolanas hacienda?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. She said she was the caretaker for the mansion, which was once owned by an Italian rancher family, the Oviedos. Now she kept the building maintained for historical interest, as it was one of the oldest houses in the Copiapó valley.
“We’re looking for the place where Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, spent the night. Is this it?”
She waved at a mud-brick structure behind the house. “I think so,” she said. “It’s supposed he would have stayed here.” The mansion, she said, dated to the 1920s, but the low adobe structure was much older. “Go on,” she said. “Take a look inside.”
The walls of the adobe building were cracking, and some of the dried mud had chipped away to reveal straw and dried grass. Rickety wooden posts held up roof beams that looked ready to collapse. I pushed past an incongruous truck camper shell resting against the deteriorating wooden door and walked through into the dark, cool tile room. A couple of barrels rested in the corner. The adobe building certainly looked like it had been around for 170 years. “You know, with Chagas’ disease the three things they say to avoid are old houses, adobe, and rural areas,” Josh said, entering the room behind me. “Check, check, check. God should have hung a sign outside, ‘Get Chagas’ disease here.’”
Chagas disease, an illness spread by absolutely filthy South American insects called assassin bugs, had become one of Josh’s major preoccupations in the desert. My own preoccupations, perhaps incautiously, lay elsewhere. In all my South American travels, I had never seen an actual building where Darwin had spent the night. Now, near the end of my time in Chile, I was suddenly confronted with this crumbling adobe surprise. My imagination scrambled to get its bearings. What would this room have been for? Who would have been here? What would it have sounded like? Smelled like? Would it have been as cool, or as dark? Did it have the same tile floor? Was it actually the same building? I didn