Floreana

PREFACE

The Galapagos Islands have been considered and positioned as the living laboratory of evolution. It was here where, in 1935, a 25-year-old, young, and passionate Charles Darwin had the opportunity to collect samples and specimens that could allow him to, some twenty years later in 1859, publish his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, generally known as On the Origin of Species. This landmark in the understanding of the natural world has given the Galapagos a worldwide recognition that is intimately bounded to science and research. Moreover, this living laboratory of evolution proved itself in top shape when starting in 1973, Peter and Rosemary Grant demonstrated the theory of evolution in animals so small and common in the islands like the Galapagos Finches. But the Galapagos Islands are a living laboratory in another aspect, not least important and even more complex: human beings. Those who arrived to the Galapagos in the beginning looking for a home, searching for a new homeland, are an example of this component; and those who wanted to profit from the islands and their resources, either for supplying their ships or to establish industrial, penal, or slave colonies are examples as well. The survival of the fittest and the adaptation to the environment were concepts that the early settlers had to learn and practice from the moment they landed on the islands, no matter their final objective. Very few of those entrepreneurships ended up successfully. Many of them failed because they lacked important adaptations for living in the Galapagos; these adaptations were mainly human values such as love for hard work, patience, family unity, and discipline. The rich natural and human history has given the Galapagos the capacity to be a world class tour destination. Our inherent curiosity to understand the world, the deep fascination that wildlife exerts in people gave the Galapagos the chance to become such a destination.

The inhabitants did the rest: develop a model.

Today, tourism is the main component of the Galapagan economy, and the model used for its management and distribution is analyzed daily in the islands. The Galapagos has proved once again a living laboratory of evolution in societies, of the creation of culture, and of the adaptation of settlers to the environment. The population in Galapagos is mainly immigrant. Some arrived in the nineteenth century, some between 1930 and 1850 like the Wittmers and other pilgrim families, some before ’98, and for sure many have arrived today. No matter how, when, or why, all of us who are here today are immigrants or descend from them. The reason is very simple: the islands never had an aborigine population. The history of the islands is quite recent but has a lot of interest. It has proven that settlement entrepreneurships are successful depending on how those executing them relate with the environment; this validates Darwin theory, not only for the natural world but also for human societies. The Galapagos Islands are not what they were eighty years ago when Margret, Heinz, and Harry Wittmer arrived to Floreana in 1932. Today, the Galapagos has an estimated population of twenty (20,000) to twenty-five thousand (25,000) inhabitants. Connections with the mainland, both maritime and air, are guaranteed and many have criticized those as excessive. Cellular and conventional phone lines, radio, television, written press, and internet and social media are goods and services inhabitants consume avidly, even in the lonely and still somehow isolated Floreana. Today, a couple days are more than enough to have almost anything imported from Guayaquil or Quito; moreover, the corners, streets, and squares are very well fit with products of all kinds. The level of consumption of an inhabitant of the islands is equal to any other in mainland Ecuador; in some cases it is even superior. The needs and priorities that the first inhabitants once had are only anecdotes of a time that is not very distant but that is long gone. This book is a tribute to those first settlers that arrived to the islands.

The Galapagos Islands have seen many entrepreneurships along their short and passionate human history; very few of those have been able to sustain in time and flourish. The Wittmer family in Floreana is one of these few.

The book Floreana, written by Margret Wittmer, is the testimony of this family’s entrepreneurship. They inhabit and love the islands to this day. This book was first published in 1959 and has been translated into more than 14 languages along the years. The story of the Wittmers of Galapagos and the mysteries of Floreana have traveled around the world; the stories told have created a lot of interest and visitors to the islands.

This book and the events narrated in it have raised interest and study of world renowned historians and researchers. Like every great story, it has generated versions and reactions on those who were not there at the time, but that feel smart enough to make assumptions and even affirmations, about events they did not witness.

The real value of the story in this narration goes further than the novel interest of it. The mystery, disappearances and eccentric characters give the book a nice touch and make the story a thriller. But the main storyline here is the account of hard work, family values and love for ones homeland. This is the legacy that Margret Wittmer leaves for those of us who knew her, for those of us who lived the wonderful woman. This book is also a message for all the inhabitants in the Galapagos at this time.

With a Galapagan culture in process of formation; a task that proves more complicated with the global culture we live today, and under the economic and social models that rule the islands; the task of evolving to a local culture seems very complicated. Even though the values presented in this book are universal, and create value to the reader no matter your origin, it is fundamental that this book becomes a guide for today and tomorrow’s Galapagans. We will find keys in this book that will help us survive trough evolution.

Personally, I think this evolution will involve changing the way we consume goods and services by developing a new approach. This approach will have to be based on understanding the real value the natural world and evaluating the way we as individuals interact with it. This can be achieved by having new attitude and revising the set of values for the choices we make.

That would make a great difference.

This new edition has been updated to complete the labor of Margret Wittmer and of those of us that come from her legacy.

It contains historical data and non published material to this time. This new edition has social means as well. The Rolf Wittmer Foundation will donate 85 percent of the profit for social development projects in Floreana. For us, this is only a way to give back to our homeland what we have received from it while we honor our predecessors. May the story of the Wittmer family, as well as many other families in the islands, could be a good guide on how to live in the islands. This could also be one of the factors that help develop and strengthen the long awaited for Galapagan culture.

May the story of the Wittmer family, as well as many other families in the islands, could be a good guide on how to live in the islands. This could also be one of the factors that help develop and strengthen the long awaited for Galapagan culture. May this culture be founded on honoring those who arrived to this paradise, lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and six hundred miles west of the nearest land, looking for a different and better place to live, mainly with peace and balance with nature as one of their major objectives.

Jorge A. Mahauad Wittmer.

October 2013

CHAPTER ONE

The grey outlines of the little fishing boat slowly faded into the sea mist, till at last they disappeared altogether. She had brought us here, and half an hour before we were still aboard with her skipper and crew. Now we were on our own, stranded on Floreana, this lonely island.

Behind us lay the sea and the shifting mist, above us the sky, infinite as the sea and a dismal grey. Ahead lay the future we had chosen for ourselves, our new life.

At the edge of the little bay where we had landed, the ground was a greyish white, studded with heavy black lava boulders, but with no trees or bushes, scarcely even a blade of grass: a forbidding scene. There were a few trees and bushes here and there a little farther inland, but the trees had no leaves, and their dark grey, lifeless branches stood out against the wild and desolate landscape.

We turned round in silence, our eyes searching desperately for the little boat. There was no sign of her; the mist over the sea had long since swallowed her up. We still did not speak, we felt too downhearted. This was where we were going to live; this was to be our Eden.

Heinz and I were alone, for Harry had gone up the coast a bit with the two dogs. Harry was Heinz’s twelve-year-old son and my stepson. We looked at each other, my husband and I, knowing without a word spoken that we were both thinking the same thing: there’s no going back. We had burnt our boats in the old phrase, or anyhow our boat had gone, and it might be months before another ship put in here. I had twenty marks on me in German money, and a handful of sucres, the Ecuadorian currency. Even if a ship came, we couldn’t get home on that.

The nearest mainland, part of Ecuador, was six hundred miles away. Surely there was no lonelier, more forlorn place imaginable than this island with the lovely name like a flower in bloom.

But we had come to Floreana now, and there was no going back.

We walked a little way over the grey sand, past the black blocks of lava, knowing that many before us had tried to settle on this island—that all of those former settlers had failed, given up, gone away. We walked on into the silence. The sea lapped softly on the beach. Birds flew by, birds we had never seen before, with red crops and long black wings: probably frigatebirds. Then all was quiet again.

We stopped thinking of the few sucres we had on us, of the vast expanses of water cutting us off from the world. We would shut our eyes to the dismal scene in front of us; we had not come here for that. Suddenly Hertha and Lump, our two Alsatians, began barking. They were mother and son, Lump only a six-week-old puppy when we left Germany. We heard them chasing off and Harry whistling them back excitedly.

Ahead of us a wild donkey galloped across the grey scrub. Its hide was a silvery grey. It had a black cross going from the head right down and past the neck and branching off down both shoulders. The dogs were still racing after it; we could hear their whining and the thud of its hooves. So there was something alive on the island after all.

Heinz and I watched the donkey and the dogs and were revived by this sign of life. Instinctively we clasped hands: no looking back now—we walked on into our island. After one hundred yards we raised our eyes from the dreary grey shore with its lava rocks to see a wall of pale green behind it. The ground was steaming from the heavy rain that had been falling. Behind the bare thorny scrub we discovered the first green trees: acacia-like algarrobo, palo santo, and the dwarf muyuyo trees, which were only to be found here on Floreana. More and more appeared out of the slight mist, varying in height and with various shades of green; they looked like theatre props arranged one behind the other.

I want to explore inland a bit, said Heinz. You coming?

No, I’ll stay here, I answered, watching him going off with Harry and the dogs through the gently rising bush.

Completely alone, I sat on one of the shelves of lava, dabbling my feet in the water of the Pacific Ocean, which stretched away in all its monotonous vastness. The sun had triumphed over the mist and was shining almost straight down onto the island. It was not too hot, but pleasantly warming and comforting, since for the last six days and nights we had not had a dry stitch of clothing to wear.

Thousands of small silvery sardines played in the little bay where I sat. Farther out I could see bigger fish leaping out of the water here and there.

Charms of finches whirred in the air, and from the bush rising above the shore I could still hear the cry of the wild donkey; otherwise an uncanny silence reigned over Floreana. But I no longer felt as terribly alone as I had in the first minutes. The sun was there, the donkeys were almost familiar to me, and the birds flew very low over my head, fearless. Only the migratory birds would flee from us if they came onto the island, because they had experience of man.

The fear felt by birds and other creatures is an instinct directed exclusively against Man—so Charles Darwin had written when he visited this group of volcanic islands, the Galapagos, almost one hundred years before me on the famous Voyage of the Beagle.

It was the variation of individual species from one island to another, especially the tortoises and the finches, that crystallized Darwin’s ideas for the Origin of Species.

I knew that the islands had animal and plant life that was unique. The giant tortoises—galapagos in Spanish—which gave the islands their name, were no longer extant on Floreana, but right in front of me were two iguanas, strange dragonesque creatures about three feet long, like some prehistoric reptile that ought to have become extinct ages ago. Apparently these marine iguanas were the world’s only sea-going lizards.

I thought back to all I had read in books about the islands and about our new home, of which we were rather timidly taking possession. For a few moments I imagined myself sitting in my house in Cologne with a book open in front of me. Then I looked up and saw that this was reality: the sea, the shore with its dark boulders, the two iguanas that waddled past me with only a brief curious glance at the strange creature above them.

Meanwhile Heinz had returned and some fifty yards behind me had quickly put up our main tent in case the rain started again. Next to it he had put a tarpaulin covering our kitchen and stores: crates, boxes, hampers, sacks, cases, and plants we had brought with us—bananas, sugarcane, coffee, yucca, camotes, otoi—all in a jumble together. I decided that the big crate of books should be our table, and put a tablecloth on it; some of the other crates would serve as chairs. It was beginning to look more comfortable, quite different anyhow from those first minutes when the boat sailed away, leaving us alone and disconsolate.

I let my thoughts stray back. We had left Amsterdam two months ago in July 1932. In Guayaquil, the chief port of Ecuador, we saw the mainland for the last time. Then we were a week on the seas to reach Chatham, the main island of the Galapagos group, where the Ecuadorian governor lived. We had paid to go as far as Floreana, but the captain of our primitive little ship declared he could go no further. I didn’t know why, but I did know—they had told me in Guayaquil—that it was hopeless trying to argue with an Ecuadorian on such a matter: if he wouldn’t do a thing, he wouldn’t. In this part of the world lots of things were different from the way they were back in Europe, and that was something you had to get used to. Right from the start of our new life I resolved to respect the customs and attitudes of these people, and on the whole I have managed it fairly well, although the excitable Rhinelander in me has often rebelled.

We were stuck in Chatham for three weeks, till the governor put at our disposal a fishing boat that was to take us to Floreana. Tomorrow we’ll be there, the skipper promised proudly, a dark-skinned cheerful man with a chubby good-natured face. His craft, twenty-five feet long and six feet wide, was so tightly crammed with her three-man crew, us three, our two dogs, and all the luggage, that it was almost impossible to move; you just sat tight where you were. It was the end of August, when it is painfully cold in these waters, and to make matters worse, I was seasick. We comforted ourselves with the thought that it would all be over in twelve hours.

Water came splashing into the boat, and in a few minutes we were all drenched to the skin. On top of that, it started raining. We were miserably cold; even the sugarcane brandy the governor had thoughtfully provided failed to warm us up. Our teeth chattered in chorus.

The night was pitch-black with no moon or stars. It was depressing and frightening to have only the endless expanses of sea around me. I had never before been in an open boat on a grim black night like this. Heinz tried to cheer me up, saying things like: It’s really not so bad, it seems worse than it is because of the darkness. But that’ll soon be over, and by dawn we’ll be in sight of journey’s end, our island.

At dawn, sure enough, our skipper suddenly became excited, pointing towards the horizon. We saw a strip of grey land, and a small bay. Post Office Bay, he told us. We even saw what looked like two or three derelict houses, the remains of a previous attempt at settlement by a party of Norwegians; they too, like the others before them, had failed to build a new life on Floreana. These reminders of their fate did little to cheer us up.

When it grew lighter we were able to pick out details, primarily the volcanic mountains of different sizes that stood on the island. The picture was still anything but inviting, everything grey on grey.

The Spaniards had sometimes called the Galapagos the enchanted islands, because they seemed endowed with magical power to attract or repel ships, and we were now exposed to some of this magic. After two hours sailing we approached Blackbeach Bay, southwest of Post Office Bay, where we were to land, but then the wind dropped completely. We were so near the promised land, but could not move a yard closer all day. Thick clouds came down between us and our island. Hunger and thirst joined forces with cold and wet in oppressing us as the second night broke over the boat. The current was terribly strong and must have driven us away from Floreana, farther and farther, at about three miles an hour.

The next morning the crew made desperate efforts to put in to the small harbor, but once more in vain. We were getting dangerously short of water. Coffee was brewed on the ship’s oven, a large empty food tin: one cup for each of us, that was all the water ration would allow. But this one cup of hot coffee was wonderfully reviving, with our bodies chilled to the bone as they were. Strange really—we were only a few miles from the Equator, and it had been cold enough to make our teeth chatter. The third night on the dark sea began. It rained harder than it had the two previous nights. Even the skipper lost some of his confidence, trying vainly to hide what he must have been thinking: that we were right out of water and might die of thirst.

By dawn the next morning we had been driven so far by the current that we were nearer to Isabela, the largest island in the group, than we were to Floreana. But that was not too bad, for on Isabela we could get food and, most importantly, water.

We landed there that afternoon, glad to be on terra firma again. But I found it hard to walk. I felt land sick and couldn’t eat a thing. After a few hours we returned to our boat. Praise be, we had water again, and also a giant tortoise—one of the galapagos with its tasty meat—ten sacks of salt, a few sacks of coffee, and one hundredweight of dried fish. The fish began to smell, and I was none too sure whether the sharks swarming greedily round the boat were after that or us.

That night, however, things were very cheerful on board. The crew began to roast bananas and cook camotes (sweet potatoes), and without feeling guilty of extravagance we could brew a good strong coffee again.

When the morning sun came through the mist we felt a pleasant warmth for the first time. I could even sleep a bit, dog-tired as I was after all the hardships and fears of the last sleepless nights. When I woke, Floreana lay ahead of us, and an hour later the crew threw a big stone into the water to serve as anchor. A thick rope made us fast, and Floreana could not escape from us again. We were home at last on 28 August 1932.

It was too late to begin unloading, so we had to spend another night on board. Thankfully the boat was no longer tossing, and the rain had stopped. Again we could sleep, though still sitting up, of course; there was no room to lie down in that cockleshell. Against my secret expectations, especially that first night in the boat, I had somehow survived, and things really did not look quite so bad any more. Even so I was very glad when we finally began to disembark beneath the rays of the morning sun. In the little landing boat, which only cleared the water by four or five inches, we got everything safely ashore: our luggage, our two Alsatians, and finally ourselves. Hertha and Lump were beside themselves with joy at having dry land under their paws again. I think they must have suffered just as much as we did during the dreadful crossing. They jumped onto the sandy beach and frisked around like wild things. Dogs, I had reflected, are lucky to have shorter memories and fewer apprehensions about the future—they know how to enjoy the present.

I came back to the present, still sitting on my ledge of black lava. The ground near me was dry as a bone: stones, stones, and more stones. It looked as if the Almighty had made it rain stones here for forty days and forty nights.

In my complete solitude I felt as if I were no longer on this earth but had landed on some distant and deserted planet. I have never before or since felt as small as I did in those minutes. I closed my eyes and, half dreaming, could see one of the lumps of stone growing bigger and bigger until it was bigger than the island and the sea…

Then I heard the dogs bark and the grim picture was wiped away. I opened my eyes and saw the stones again in their right proportion. Heinz and Harry were looking at me, smiling.

How about getting us something to eat? Heinz said. After that we’ll pay our social call.

Social call? I started slightly. Oh yes, Dr. Ritter.

It was certainly our duty to visit the two people, Germans like ourselves, who had been living on our island for three years now, its only human inhabitants besides ourselves: Dr. Karl Friedrich Ritter and his friend Frau Dore Strauch. I suppose it was their example that had given us the idea of coming here in the first place; if they could do it, so could we.

Dr. Ritter was a dentist who suddenly left Berlin in 1929 to live out a new nature philosophy on Floreana away from the world—which he hated and despised. He was a vegetarian, practiced nudism, and intended to prove that you could attain the age of one hundred forty if you lived according to nature as interpreted by his philosophy. He was forty-three then, a year older than Heinz when we left Germany, and was accompanied to the site for his experiments in natural living, not by his wife, but by Dore Strauch, a qualified teacher (though she had never actually taught) and Ritter’s most enthusiastic disciple. For months after their sensational arrival on the island they were a topic of absorbing interest to the papers and illustrated magazines.

Heinz had evidently been deeply stirred by these reports, which he followed up by reading William Beebe’s fascinating book, Galapagos: World’s End. I remember my astonishment at Christmas, 1931, only a few weeks after we were married, when we were standing in front of a men’s shop, I told him he ought to buy a new suit and he replied:

Yes, or a rifle, I can’t decide which.

A rifle? I asked blankly. What on earth do you want a rifle for?

In case we go to the Galapagos Islands, was the answer. Just for two or three years, you know. It might do as Harry’s sanatorium!

Harry had had very bad eyesight from birth, had always been extremely delicate, and at this time we were more anxious than ever about his health. A doctor recommended two years in a sanatorium, but how could we afford that? Besides, we knew that Harry would have been miserable if parted from us for two years. So Heinz thought of this solution, to leave the unhealthy conditions of city life, the social and economic insecurity then prevailing in Germany, and give Harry the peace of an enchanted island. Heinz was secretary to Dr. Adenauer, then Oberbürgermeister (mayor) of Cologne, and it meant giving up a good job. His colleagues would have been startled and shocked, and in fact he took his annual fortnight’s holiday without saying anything to them about it; we intended to leave at the end of that fortnight.

We had made arrangements to sell the flat, and had invested all our savings in equipment and supplies, notably a good set of tools both for agriculture and household use, and plenty of food stores. We took two hundredweights each of rice and beans, one hundredweight of flour, twenty-five pounds each of coffee and Quaker oats, five pounds of cocoa, plus three bottles of brandy, washing soap, matches, oil, tinned milk, and potatoes and onions for planting, a bale of yellow material for extra clothing needs, and a typewriter, in case any of our experiences should be worth putting down on paper.

While we were in Chatham, we bought many more seeds and plants: sugarcane, yucca (a sort of tapioca), banana shoots, coffee beans, otis and camotes (two sorts of sweet potato), pineapple, pumpkins, mangos, papaws, avocados, and a cock and two hens.

We knew everyone would try to dissuade us from the crazy course we were taking, so we felt it was better to keep our plans a complete secret even from friends and relatives; my father and sister were as much in the dark as any. The eve of our departure, the second Saturday of Heinz’s leave, when my sister said Good night, see you tomorrow as usual—we always met on Sunday afternoons—it was all I could do to answer a slightly strained good night, without hinting in any way that I might not be seeing her again for two or three years at least. The next morning a messenger dropped in to her the keys of our flat, with letters of explanation for her and my father—Heinz had also written one to Dr. Adenauer—and by that time we had set off on our long journey to emulate Dr. Ritter.

We had been told a few more details about him in Guayaquil. We knew that he had had all his teeth pulled out while he was still in Berlin; as a vegetarian he considered them superfluous, and as a dentist he no doubt dreaded having any kind of dental trouble on a lonely island, with all the complications that might ensue. He kept a set of steel dentures for special occasions, we learned, but did not use them for chewing.

Altogether he seemed a most peculiar character, this Ritter, and we had also been well warned of the fact that he did not like being disturbed in his island retreat. Still, we were only calling on the two of them out of politeness; we had no intention of intruding on their lives. We had our own lives to build, for ourselves, for Harry, and for the other children we might be blessed with. We wanted to be settlers in a more ordinary sense than Ritter, to build a farm out of this wilderness by the labor of our hands. But he need not be