The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin (w-1839 r-12/2006 hrs-9). A captivating narrative of scientific exploration, and probably the best adventure travel book I've ever read. Certain to uplift your mind and your spirit.

First, although he is occasionally a bit long-winded in a Victorian way, and also occasionally goes into deep scientific detail which the modern lay reader will be tempted to skim, the majorioty of the volume is terse, modern, and exciting. Second, there is an actual adventure, as Darwin relates his personal experiences ascending jungle rivers and distant mountains, avoiding bandits and hostile Indians, mingling with savages and roughnecks, eating whatever grub they have to offer and sleeping with them under the stars. The wildlife he encounters poses a certain danger, though he rarely mentions it; thus when he describes the "great black bug of the Pampas," which gorged itself on his blood one night in Chile, he left out the fact that it was probably the source of the Chagas disease that plagued him for the rest of his life. Third, it is the work of popular science, comprised of his acute observations and his intuitive reflections upon them, first made in the field, afterwards contemplated at home and then enriched by careful reading. As a result, it preserves the thrill, the intellectual stimulation and the scientific discoveries of a historical exploration. It lives up to the blurb that one editor, Leonard Engel, gave it: "The greatest scientific travel adventure ever written."

And its achievement does not end there. THE VOYAGE is a testament to one man's curiosity--his insatiable curiosity about practically every stone, plant and bug that he happens to see, and his wonder about how they got that way. (Side note: he collected and taxidermed seemingly hundreds, maybe thousands of plants and animals on the spot. How on earth did he transport several tons of collections back home?) He makes you feel that, with the right attitude, you can walk out in your yard and make your own discoveries. Whether describing the spider that sails through the air on its own web, the gaucho who strips naked to swim his horse across a river, the face of a man habituated to slavery (which Darwin rails against), Darwin's eye is keen and his heart is warm. (It is entertaining, though to see that he was in many respects a man of his time, ranking the "savages" as to their intelligence and their potential to be "civilized" and "Christianized". He is often less PC than you would hope.) Reading this book, one returns to a time when mankind believed in progress, when one bright young man could respond to the wonders of the world and find an eager audience. All the while, of course, he was seeking natural explanations for the mysteries of creation and gravitating toward his theory of evolution. So THE VOYAGE succeeds on all levels: it is a classic of scientific investigation, a noble literary work and a monument of the human spirit.