Nueva Palmira · UY
Rincón de Darwin
Imagine a steep riverbank where, in 1833, a young naturalist knelt in the red earth and turned over a fossilized clamshell that helped him begin to imagine one of the most transformative ideas in science. That bank still stands at Rincón de Darwin, a windswept promontory at Punta Gorda in Uruguay's Colonia department, barely four kilometres from Nueva Palmira. Today a zigzagging spiral staircase with 120 steps descends the fifteen-metre cliff face you were meant to see, and at its base a plaque reads: