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Charles Brewer-Carias, 71, is an explorer, naturalist and author living in the jungles of Venezuela with no intention of retiring
Charles Brewer-Carias is an explorer, naturalist and author living in Venezuela Photograph: Rory Carroll
It has been a good week for Charles Brewer-Carias. He caught a highly venomous snake. He had a snail named after him. His discovery of a new species of frog was confirmed. And he came a step closer to unveiling what he reckons is the world's oldest living organism. If that sounds implausible it is because Brewer-Carias is implausible: a septuagenarian explorer, naturalist, author and adventurer who belongs in a Victorian novel but lives on a hill overlooking Caracas and plans, among other things, an expedition to El Dorado.
"This is what keeps me going: discovery," he said, from a home decorated with butterflies, tarantulas and huge bugs in glass cases. "It's about transmitting information that has been shielded from humans for aeons." Arguably modernity and its rules have been shielded from Brewer-Carias, the grandson of a British diplomat, since he decided more than half a century ago to explore Venezuela's jungles and live a life less ordinary. He had trained as a dentist and ended up using those skills to treat and study the Yekuana tribe, whose language he speaks fluently, and lead expeditions of botanists and geographers.
The results are striking: a shelf full of books he has written and illustrated; the discovery of the world's largest quartzite cave and 27 plants, reptiles, insects and a scorpion named in his honour; a raft of diseases including malaria and leishmaniasis in his system; and a record for starting fire with sticks (2.7 seconds).
In the process, Brewer-Carias has also earned a reputation for seeking glory, abusing Indians and clandestinely mining gold and uranium, charges he strenuously denies. "Scandalous stuff. Uncouth smears," he said, the English accented with a slight Spanish lilt. There are suggestions the 71-year-old partly inspired the character of Charles Muntz, the sinister explorer in the Oscar-winning computer-animated film Up which is set amid Venezuela's Guayana highlands where Brewer-Carias has made more than 200 expeditions. "I've not seen the film but apparently Charles is an evilish character," he says.
Married twice with five children, he lives in a house he built himself high above Caracas's concrete sprawl. He greets visitors, including the Guardian, by inviting them to listen to a creature inside a wooded mound. The host then clambers up a vine, stamps, and sends a shower of seeds raining on their head. "Got you!". He also challenges male visitors to match his chin-ups on an exercise bar. On an average workout, he does 70. "To show off, I do 100."
In a jar on the porch is curled a small brown snake: Bothrops venezuelensis, also known as Venezuelan Lancehead. Highly venomous, potentially deadly, and caught just a few days earlier in the garden. Brewer-Carias will take it to a laboratory for the venom to be milked. Last week, a species of snail he found on the peak of Mount Chimanta, amid a landscape which inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, was named Breure in his honour.
He is not a professional taxonimist but was struck by how the snail gnawed the surface of a pineapple-type leaf by night and hid inside the plant by day to avoid predatory birds. "I see something in a plant or an insect or a frog, something odd, the colour, or the shape, or the way it moves, and I compare it to my stock of memories."
Recently, near his home, he caught a frog of a type he had never seen before. A taxonomist has confirmed it is a new species and will name it later this year. Only a small fraction of the species Brewer-Carias has discovered bear his name, he said, with a tinge of regret.
The biggest prize may be yet to come: coral-type silica growing from rock in a cave amid Venezuela's table-top "tepuis" mountains. It is a living organism which dates back at least 317,000 years, according to scientists and could be over one million years old. "This could be the world's oldest living organism," said the explorer, his voice dropping to a dramatic low. "This has never existed for man. But I'm going to make it exist. It's a kind of magic."
A former youth minister who holds the Order of the Liberator award, he occupies an awkward position in today's Venezuela. Intruders broke into his house back in 2003: he was shot in the shoulder and killed one of the trio with his shotgun.
President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution has not warmed to an apparent Victorian relic. Brewer-Carias receives no government funding and has little regular income. He drives a battered old car and relies on friends to pay his bills and subsidise expeditions. When he located a 17th century French shipwreck, the government froze his team out of the salvage, he said. He will wait for an "honest government" before launching an expedition to El Dorado: a real place which spawned the legend of a city of gold.
"The name refers to a man who lived by a lake near Manoa. I know the site very well." he said. "I've been there, picked up ceramics. I will go back there with my son and two companions. We have made our plans. Together we will discover El Dorado."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/06/charles-brewer-carias-naturalist-venezuela
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 April 2010 19.51 BST
Charles Brewer-Carias is an explorer, naturalist and author living in Venezuela Photograph: Rory Carroll
It has been a good week for Charles Brewer-Carias. He caught a highly venomous snake. He had a snail named after him. His discovery of a new species of frog was confirmed. And he came a step closer to unveiling what he reckons is the world's oldest living organism. If that sounds implausible it is because Brewer-Carias is implausible: a septuagenarian explorer, naturalist, author and adventurer who belongs in a Victorian novel but lives on a hill overlooking Caracas and plans, among other things, an expedition to El Dorado.
"This is what keeps me going: discovery," he said, from a home decorated with butterflies, tarantulas and huge bugs in glass cases. "It's about transmitting information that has been shielded from humans for aeons." Arguably modernity and its rules have been shielded from Brewer-Carias, the grandson of a British diplomat, since he decided more than half a century ago to explore Venezuela's jungles and live a life less ordinary. He had trained as a dentist and ended up using those skills to treat and study the Yekuana tribe, whose language he speaks fluently, and lead expeditions of botanists and geographers.
The results are striking: a shelf full of books he has written and illustrated; the discovery of the world's largest quartzite cave and 27 plants, reptiles, insects and a scorpion named in his honour; a raft of diseases including malaria and leishmaniasis in his system; and a record for starting fire with sticks (2.7 seconds).
In the process, Brewer-Carias has also earned a reputation for seeking glory, abusing Indians and clandestinely mining gold and uranium, charges he strenuously denies. "Scandalous stuff. Uncouth smears," he said, the English accented with a slight Spanish lilt. There are suggestions the 71-year-old partly inspired the character of Charles Muntz, the sinister explorer in the Oscar-winning computer-animated film Up which is set amid Venezuela's Guayana highlands where Brewer-Carias has made more than 200 expeditions. "I've not seen the film but apparently Charles is an evilish character," he says.
Married twice with five children, he lives in a house he built himself high above Caracas's concrete sprawl. He greets visitors, including the Guardian, by inviting them to listen to a creature inside a wooded mound. The host then clambers up a vine, stamps, and sends a shower of seeds raining on their head. "Got you!". He also challenges male visitors to match his chin-ups on an exercise bar. On an average workout, he does 70. "To show off, I do 100."
In a jar on the porch is curled a small brown snake: Bothrops venezuelensis, also known as Venezuelan Lancehead. Highly venomous, potentially deadly, and caught just a few days earlier in the garden. Brewer-Carias will take it to a laboratory for the venom to be milked. Last week, a species of snail he found on the peak of Mount Chimanta, amid a landscape which inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, was named Breure in his honour.
He is not a professional taxonimist but was struck by how the snail gnawed the surface of a pineapple-type leaf by night and hid inside the plant by day to avoid predatory birds. "I see something in a plant or an insect or a frog, something odd, the colour, or the shape, or the way it moves, and I compare it to my stock of memories."
Recently, near his home, he caught a frog of a type he had never seen before. A taxonomist has confirmed it is a new species and will name it later this year. Only a small fraction of the species Brewer-Carias has discovered bear his name, he said, with a tinge of regret.
The biggest prize may be yet to come: coral-type silica growing from rock in a cave amid Venezuela's table-top "tepuis" mountains. It is a living organism which dates back at least 317,000 years, according to scientists and could be over one million years old. "This could be the world's oldest living organism," said the explorer, his voice dropping to a dramatic low. "This has never existed for man. But I'm going to make it exist. It's a kind of magic."
A former youth minister who holds the Order of the Liberator award, he occupies an awkward position in today's Venezuela. Intruders broke into his house back in 2003: he was shot in the shoulder and killed one of the trio with his shotgun.
President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution has not warmed to an apparent Victorian relic. Brewer-Carias receives no government funding and has little regular income. He drives a battered old car and relies on friends to pay his bills and subsidise expeditions. When he located a 17th century French shipwreck, the government froze his team out of the salvage, he said. He will wait for an "honest government" before launching an expedition to El Dorado: a real place which spawned the legend of a city of gold.
"The name refers to a man who lived by a lake near Manoa. I know the site very well." he said. "I've been there, picked up ceramics. I will go back there with my son and two companions. We have made our plans. Together we will discover El Dorado."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/06/charles-brewer-carias-naturalist-venezuela
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