Destinations South America
On the Darwin trail
From beautiful beaches to glorious glaciers, the coastline of South America is as breathtaking a sight today as it would have been in Darwin’s day.
Although 170 years have passed since he published his journal, ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’, much of the South American scenery he admired in the 1830s is still as stunning as ever.
This ship sails to
South America:
Darwin and his crew would still recognise the distinctive outline of Rio de Janeiro’s Sugar Loaf Mountain rising above the entrance to the city’s ‘splendid harbour’, as he called it. Corcovado, the hunchback hill, and the breathtaking views from its summit would also be reassuringly familiar to the young explorer, though not the famous Art Deco statue of Christ the Redeemer, practically a symbol of the city itself these days.
As for Rio’s famous beaches, Copacabana and Ipanema, they might be thronged with sunbathers now, but the soft sweeps of sand are as glorious as ever.
Continuing along the Brazilian coastline south of Rio, past unspoilt beaches backed by lush countryside teeming with exotic birds and butterflies, brings you to the vast mouth of the Rio de la Plata. Its wide, open vistas, with the Atlantic on one side and the estuary on the other, make a suitably impressive setting for Montevideo, the compact but charming Uruguayan capital.
Further upstream, on the west bank, is Argentina’s vibrant and sprawling yet picturesque capital, far larger than when Darwin passed this way. He would be on more familiar territory on a boat trip on the Parana River – a tributary of the Rio de la Plata – and its delta; its labyrinth of tiny subtropical islands has hardly changed in 200 years.
As you head along the Patagonian coast towards the tip of South America, the surroundings become wilder and more rugged. This is a land of snow-capped mountains and dramatic fjords and channels cut by long-ago glaciers. Few people live here, in edge-of-the-world towns such as Punta Arenas (which didn’t exist in Darwin’s time) on the Strait of Magellan.
Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego teem with wildlife - including penguins and whales, while breathtaking glaciers, such as Amalia and Pio X in Chile’s are an awesome sight at the wonderfully named Bernardo O’Higgins National Park. This continent so rich in natural beauty that you feel Darwin would be as amazed at it today, as he was when he found it just as amazed by it more than 170 years ago.
You can find further information at: