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Patagonian and Fuegian Tales

August 23, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

‘I passed through three boring towns’ was the start of a chapter that changed the way I thought about travel writers yet again. It helped that I would visit them after I read the chapter. Both visits were stopovers of a kind. One by commercial jet, the other by ship seeking shelter from two cyclones that seemed to merge just to scare us off.

I had found In Patagonia in a shop in Buenos Aires in late 1995. I was living in a hotel on Avenida de Mayo just a stone’s throw from the Casa Rosada, the Presidential Palace. Carlos Menem had just been re-elected and there were almost weekly protest marches on Thursdays. Once, a firework cannister was directed at me for watching the passing flag, banner and placard waving throngs from my third floor hotel balcony window.

The Squid Fleet ran with us from the storm to Rio Gallegos.
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Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: argentina, booklink, bruce chatwin, buenos aires, charles darwin, language, patagonia, photo, robert fitzroy, travel

Beaks and Travel

June 20, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I was sitting alone in a cold, damp bed-and-breakfast type bedroom in November 1995. It was a dreich Scottish night in Aberdeen and I started to read The Beak of the Finch (1995). It remains a stand-out science read and one of the most influential books I’ve enjoyed. The room was cold enough that I felt the need to wrap myself in blankets pulled off the bed, wishing I was like the Tierra del Fuegans who needed no clothes. Darwin was a great diversion when I was undecided; besides being cold, I couldn’t be sure if I was humiliated or amused.

‘The mind is our beak, and the human mind is ever more variable than the brain’ wrote Jonathan Weiner in The Beak of the Finch.

Reasons to need offshore survival training. Tierra del Fuego 1995.
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Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, charles darwin, evolution, photos, robert fitzroy, storm, travel

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