port of entry. It is a naval base (navy: 1 launch), and the center of
population for all the Galápagos—an island group inhabited by fewer than
2,000 people. Water is the limiting factor, and only four of the islands
provide enough water to sustain permanent colonies. The names of the
various islands can be most confusing, as each boasts of at least
two—Spanish and English—and usually more. Santa Cruz, for example, is
also known as Chavez, but the English gave it the sturdy name of
Indefatigable—a name which the people there obviously find tiresome, as
it is never used (except in articles in the _National Geographic_).
We spent only a couple of days at Puerto Chico, long enough to get our
breath, stretch our legs, and deliver a letter. The latter job took all
one day. While in the Canal Zone we had been entrusted with a message to
Mrs. Karin Cobos, who had come over as a child in a Norwegian colonizing
expedition which eventually petered out. She had married and remained in
the islands and was now, we were told, living “up in the hills.” Ted,
Nick, and Barbara expressed their willingness to look her up.
They started walking early in the morning up the fine, broad road which
leads from Puerto Chico to Progreso, a tiny settlement five miles up the
mountain. This fine road lasted for two miles. Beyond that it was still
under construction. Each working day the road is pushed forward a foot
or so, and there is universal confidence in the islands that someday,
within the lifetime of many now alive (the younger ones), a fine highway
will run all the way to Progreso and a jeep will be imported to use it.
Just beyond the end of the completed section the party left the parched,
sandy, cactus-strewn slopes and began to climb into the hills where
low-lying clouds were constantly dropping moisture. The cleared track
soon degenerated into a muddy path, but there were still plenty of rocks
so that the travelers could step from one to another and so hope to keep
their shoes reasonably clean. As they plodded on, however, the drizzle
changed to a downpour, the rocks and lava hunks became fewer and the mud
thicker. Soon the path was merely a trace winding through dense
undergrowth and knee-deep in mud. Long before the gang reached Progreso,
they were unrecognizable and hoping only to keep the mud out of their
hair.
In Progreso, which is a cluster of tiny houses scattered about in a
(muddy) clearing, they learned that (a) Karin Cobos—well known, of
course, throughout the islands—lived somewhere up beyond the village,
indicated by a vast and indeterminate sweep of the arm, and (b) not a
soul in Progreso spoke a word of English.
They were ushered to the Catholic priest, a Franciscan, whose rope belt
dangled behind him tied in two neat knots, as if he wanted to be sure
not to forget some important commissions. They spoke to him in English,
French, fumbling German, and fluent Japanese (courtesy of Nick), and he
answered in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and—presumably—Latin. Anyway,
he _did_ understand their mission, and made a sortie through the village
to return with Chico, a lad who would serve as guide and who was “bueno
muchacho.”
Meanwhile they relaxed on the veranda of the priest’s house and sampled
some very uplifting brandy and cups of Galápagos coffee—native grown and
very strong and good, which is made by adding hot milk ad lib to thick
coffee essence. There was also a basketful of fresh rolls, which made a
great hit, being the first fresh bread they had eaten since Panama.
At last, in spite of the priest’s dubious warnings that the journey
ahead would be “malo _malo_,” they pushed on, with their young guide
loping barefooted ahead. They were confident that the going couldn’t
possibly get worse—but they were soon disabused. As they struggled on,
Barbara confesses to having cheered herself up with fantasies of their
reception:
I conjured up the picture of a large and gracious hacienda with a big
living room and deep, comfortable couches and cold drinks and
efficient servants who would lead us off to bathe and provide us with
clean dressing gowns while other servants, somewhere in the back of
the house, set to work washing and pressing our miserable clothes. And
then, after a civilized lunch of crisp, fresh salad and perhaps more
hot rolls with our hostess, we would be sent back down the mountain on
horses so we could keep clean and neat all the way home.
Barbara felt she had some foundation for her daydreams, for we had all
read accounts of Karin Cobos, written by successive yachtsmen. We knew
she had married the son of the most prosperous plantation owner of the
Galápagos, who had later been killed by his own peons, and we had read
descriptions of their huge ranch house, their riding horses, and the
ease and luxurious living with which the family Cobos were surrounded.
At last Chico stopped and pointed across the valley to the ridge of the
next hill, seemingly miles away.
“La casita de la Señora Cobos!” he announced proudly.
They saw a lonely, bleak shoebox sitting foursquare against the skyline,
and between them and it a sea of water in which cattle splashed up to
their bellies. Obviously, to get to the “casita” they were going to have
to swim.
At last they reached the house, wrung out their pants, peeled off their
sodden shoes and socks, and were ushered in. Karin turned out to be a
dark-haired and dark-eyed Norwegian woman, who looked a handsome
thirty-five, but must have been in her fifties—Robinson, for instance,
visited here and was smitten by her in 1926. She didn’t seem at all
surprised to see them, but accepted her letter graciously and read it at
once, while her guests cleaned themselves up, using a pitcher of water
and a wash basin. Then they sat down to a plentiful lunch of rice, fried
eggs, plantain, and more of that strong, good Galápagos coffee.
Karin spoke surprisingly good English and was happy to talk about former
yachtsmen she had met, but not about her life on the island. Barbara
gathered that she had divorced her Ecuadorian plantation-owning husband
and moved high into the hills, where hers was the only house for miles
in any direction. Apparently she liked it that way, and certainly it
lessened her former loss of cattle by theft. She made her living by
exporting beef to the mainland (Ecuador), where her oldest daughter was
at present at college.
This was our first encounter with the rugged and independent breed which
is the Galápagos pioneer—but we were to meet quite a few more when we
got to Santa Cruz.
The trip down the mountain was considerably faster, though no less
sticky, but with the advantage that conditions got progressively better.
In Progreso, they dropped off their guide with a gift of some cheese and
a couple of cans of V-8 (all they had left), and staggered into Puerto
Chico just at dark. Mission accomplished.
When I checked out with the San Cristobal authorities, I was handed a
bill for $10 U.S.A. (American money specifically demanded—they did not
want Ecuadorian.) The special assessment was for “entering at an
extraordinary hour”—namely, 6:00 P.M. local time. When I protested, the
port captain shrugged and said, “It’s the law.” I had a strong hunch
that had we entered at 10:00 A.M., another law—fresh from the port
captain’s desk—would have charged us $10—American—for entering “in the
forenoon.” I got part of my money’s worth by delivering an oration of a
few well-chosen words. Part of my behavior was normal irritation, but
part of it was an act: I hoped that by a vigorous protest and a threat
to report the matter to Officials in High Places I could at least keep
the shakedown market stable, so that the next yachtsman wouldn’t be
faced with a bill for $20—U.S.A.
We left Wreck Bay by the light of a brilliant full moon at 0200, hoping
to cover the 50 miles to Santa María (also known as Charles and as
Floreana) before dark. By suppertime we were anchored in 4½ fathoms in
Post Office Bay, renowned, obviously, for its post office—but one that
is a bit different from most and with a special history. Since the days
of the whaling ships, a barrel has been maintained here on the beach,
where ships outbound for two or three years could deposit letters to be
picked up by other ships on their way home.
In recent years this tradition had been carried on by passing yachts,
with the help of the sole white family on the island, the Witmers. Mrs.
Witmer collects the letters that have been deposited, cancels them with
an official rubber stamp marked “Post Office Bay,” and leaves them to be
picked up by the next yacht. We had heard that mainland postal services
all over the world honor this cancellation.
We had been given a number of letters and packages for the Witmers and
were told that they would sight us at once from their “plantation of
sorts” in the hills and would come down to the beach to receive us. When
no one appeared throughout the next day, we decided that they might be
down at their “seaside cottage,” around the island at Black Beach, and
in the afternoon we climbed several miles up into the hills, following
an old trail and hoping it would lead us to one establishment or
another. There are only two or three families living on Santa María, as
the population is stringently limited by that vital element—water. The
one permanent spring—a slow drip from the rocks—provides an assured
source of water sufficient to maintain a very limited group.
Our hike was very different in character from the soggy expedition to
Karin’s. Santa María is not high enough to catch much rain. The terrain
is rough and sandy, covered with low brush and with frequent volcanic
outcroppings. Near the beach at Post Office Bay are evidences of an
early attempt at colonization, in the form of neatly laid-out foundation
stones and possibly old corrals of lava rock, but the experiment failed
before it had progressed very far due to the lack of water. Beyond the
abortive settlement a couple of trails had been cut through the scrubby
undergrowth and we set off hopefully, but one after another they petered
out into goat tracks and then into nothing. At last we gave it up and
returned to the beach.
We dropped our own mail into the white post office-barrel, which has
been kept painted and in good repair by the crew of Irving Johnson’s
brigantine _Yankee_, and added a small signboard with the name _Phoenix_
to the other names which had been recorded through the years. In the
process we disturbed a big and lazy seal sleeping in the sun nearby. He
was not afraid of us, merely indignant at our disturbing his nap, but
when poked with a stick he obliged by cavorting clumsily down the beach
with Ted and Jessica in excited pursuit.
Our next call was at Academy Bay, on the south shore of Santa Cruz, 40
miles to the north. Following the directions we had been given back in
Balboa, we anchored just off the stone house on the point, which we knew
belonged to Carl and Marga Angermeyer. We put out a stern anchor to
prevent too much swinging and here we stayed for eight days—among the
most enjoyable days of our entire voyage. The settlers we met in Santa
Cruz came nearer to fitting our ideas of true pioneers than any other
group we had seen. No easy tropical paradise for them—no bananas and
breadfruit dropping from the trees, no coconuts. Life is lived very
close to the subsistence level and everything has to be done the hard
way. Their salt is collected from saltpans; fats and cooking oils must
be rendered from giant green turtles that the men go out to catch; bread
is “sourdough,” and at each baking time a bit must be kept back as a
starter for the next batch; coffee is grown in the hills and prepared by
the individual housewife as needed.
Those delicate souls whose coffee must be just so would be interested in
the virtuosity required to get a good cup of coffee in the Galápagos.
First, you get the beans from where they are grown in the mountains, a
round trip which takes a full day. Let them dry for a few days. Then
shell and pound them until the hulls are free. Separate beans from
chaff—a tedious process unless you do it outdoors in a strong breeze—and
roast over a kerosene fire at low heat, stirring constantly for a long
time, until properly brown. Grind through the coffee mill. Then make
your coffee—and by now you’ll be ready for it.
The principal problem is water, for although there is sufficient
rainfall in the hills, the ground is porous, and the water percolates
through. At sea level rain is rare, and every drop must be caught and
treasured, so that the first step in constructing a new house is to
build the cistern, and the second is to erect a properly guttered roof
above it. Walls, floor, and any desirable divisions into rooms can come
later. Washing and cooking are always done in brackish water collected
from shallow wells. In times of drought this is also drinking water. To
us, it tasted impossibly salty, but we were assured that one could get
used to it.
Of course, there are no doctors here, and no dentists; and certainly
nothing resembling a corner drugstore. Whatever supplies must come from
outside arrive by yacht, or by infrequent supply ship from Ecuador. On
this ship they send out their only cash crop, and it is a skimpy one:
fish which they have caught and salted down. The boat also brings their
mail—when the captain thinks of it. On his most recent trip, just before
we arrived, he had forgotten to pick up the sacks of mail waiting on the
dock at Guayaquil, and seemed to think it a great joke. Also, Marga
showed us a 100-pound sack, filled with sand, which had been delivered
in lieu of the sugar they had ordered. The captain disclaimed any
knowledge of the substitution and since there was no way of tracing the
theft there was nothing to be done about it—except go without sugar and
hope for better luck next time.
There is a strange dichotomy on Santa Cruz: those who have settled at
sea level and those who live on the mountain. Only a narrow, rugged
trail, impassable in the rainy season, connects the two settlements, and
it takes four hours of hard climbing to reach the first of the houses
“on the hill.”
The people here live a very isolated and completely agricultural life.
They grow vegetables and raise cattle, trading their produce for
sea-food products, or for a little cash, with the colony along the
shore. Each week, Alf Kastdalen, only son of the most enterprising of
the Norwegian settlers in the hills, comes down to shore with a train of
burros and distributes the sacks of potatoes, the carrots and onions,
bananas, and freshly killed meat for which he took orders the week
before. On the return trip the burros carry an equal weight of
supplies—anything from sacks of flour to rolls of barbed wire—which must
be ordered from Ecuador, stored in a locked shed near the landing, and
packed up the hill little by little as needed.
Because we hoped to get some fresh vegetables to take with us, Barbara
and I took a trip up to visit the Kastdalens, who have been on Santa
Cruz for twenty-three years, having come with one of the first
resettlement groups from Norway. The trail into the hills ran for six
miles almost straight up and could have been quite as bad as the one on
San Cristóbal, except that it was not raining. We took about four hours
for the ascent, trudging behind and beside Alf’s string of six tiny
burros who were well loaded with supplies. On a later trip these same
burros hauled up our small kerosene refrigerator, which we had
mistakenly bought in Sydney. As I had feared, it turned out to be
useless on the boat, smoking even in a quiet anchorage, but worked fine
when absolutely stable. Now the Kastdalens, for the first time, could
enjoy the luxury of iced drinks.
We spent the night at the Kastdalens’, where we enjoyed good
conversation and a meal of wild pig (plentiful in the hills, along with
wild cattle), potatoes, avocados, fried plantain—and plenty of fresh
milk, butter, and home-baked bread. It was an amazing contrast to the
scanty fare of the equally hospitable Angermeyers on the shore, but in
talking with the elder Kastdalen women we realized that they felt keenly
their isolation from friends in Academy Bay. Mrs. Kastdalen asked
wistfully for news of Marga Angermeyer, whom she had not seen for over a
year—the last time being on the occasion of a wedding on Santa María of
the Witmers’ son. This event had been a gala affair, attended by almost
every European on the islands, all of whom seemed to feel as close to
one another’s affairs as if they had been members of a single family.
A few days later Ted and Jessica also made a trip into the hills, this
time as the guests of another Norwegian family, the Hornemans. Old Mr.
Horneman seemed a gentle and scholarly sort, not at all the type to
wrest a living from a complete wilderness, yet it was he who was the
first settler on Santa Cruz; with his own hands he had built the solid
house, raised on stilts, in which his wife and his teen-age son and
daughter lived; and by his own efforts he had reclaimed and fenced in
and cultivated many acres of land. He had captured and redomesticated
cattle gone wild, and bred a new stock. Now, after many arduous years,
he was taken with a very unusual hobby: using selected gourds of the
proper shape, he sketched in, painted and decorated remarkably accurate
globes of the world.
The Hornemans’ two children, Friedel and Siegvart, were mature beyond
their years in responsibilities, but they had a joyous enthusiasm for
life and a thirst for knowledge that was challenging. Both of them spoke
five languages: English—which was the lingua franca among the European
settlers; Spanish—the language of Ecuador; and German and French, in
addition to their own Norwegian. Siegvart explained the French as
follows: “Mamma and Mrs. Angermeyer used to speak French when they
didn’t want us children to know what they were talking about, so of
course we learned French!”
Friedel also made a remark which impressed Ted and Jessica deeply. “I
had ice cream once,” she told them, obviously savoring the memory.
“During the war, when there were Americans on Baltra, they took me to
visit the camp one day and I had ice cream!”
“We rode in a truck too,” Siegvart added.
The American Army, during the war, had had a base on Baltra, a small
island just to the north, which guarded the Pacific approaches to the
Panama Canal. After their departure, the buildings and supplies left
behind had gradually found their way to the islands and to Ecuador.
Salvaged items are, of course, very important in the Galápagos, and near
the Angermeyers’ house, down on the coast, I saw the remains of Joe
Pachernegg’s yacht, _Sunrise_, wrecked on the west side of Santa Cruz
and brought over piece by piece.
Two yachts called at Academy Bay during our stay—a rather unusual
concentration of visitors. The first was _Cle du Sol_, a French yacht,
which had the distinction of having a grand piano in the one large
cabin, around which the boat had evidently been built; and the day
before we left, an American motor yacht, the 110-foot _Valinda_, out of
Los Angeles, pulled in. We met the owner of _Valinda_, who planned to
return soon to the States and arranged to rendezvous with him at James
Bay, on uninhabited James Island, on the morning of February 16. He
promised to pick up any mail we had ready and give quick delivery back
to California, a wonderful opportunity to get messages home a couple of
months earlier than we had expected.
On the day before our departure we had a community party ashore, and
with the help of the men rigged up a 12-volt generator, with a 110-volt
converter, so that we could give a slide show. This was our farewell
gesture to the people of the Galápagos, for although we planned to see
more of the islands as we cruised to the north, Academy Bay was the last
human outpost.
16 BACK TO HAWAII
“How come change ya mind?”
From Academy Bay, on February 13, we made a short hop around to the east
side of Santa Cruz, where we anchored for the night between two tiny
islands just offshore, the Plaza Islands. It was dusk when we arrived
and we lost no time in launching the dinghy, in order to take a closer
look at the multitude of seals that were crowding the banks and
disporting in the water. As we drew closer to shore, more and more seals
slid from the rocks and swam out to circle about us, yelping excitedly
as though urging us to join them. Suddenly we heard a fearful roar and
turned to see a large bull seal who had reared himself out of the water.
With open mouth and a truly terrifying bellow, he came charging toward
our cockleshell. Giving up our vague intention of perhaps landing and
kidnaping a baby seal to take along as a pet, we turned and rowed a
dignified retreat. We were allowed to depart in peace, but found that
any attempt to return from any angle whatsoever would be violently
challenged. Reluctantly we returned to the _Phoenix_, swinging gently at
anchor in our tiny cove.
All night our sleep was interrupted by the continual bleating, barking,
yelping, and roaring of the dozens of seal colonies, which seemed to
keep the watch in turns.
The next morning we set out at dawn and sailed on up the coast and
across to Bartholomew Island, just off James. The scenery here is rugged
and grand. We anchored just off a most distinctive pinnacle of black
rock, several hundred feet high, and went ashore to explore a completely
arid, sandy, volcanic, cactus-strewn terrain. In a cave in a nearby
hill, following directions given us by the Angermeyers, we found the tin
can cache in which Robinson, in 1932, and a few others since, have left
messages. We entered the _Phoenix_ in the select company and, in the
valley beyond, spelled out the name of our ship in rock letters, to add
to the other names we found there, including _Yankee_, _Inca_,
_Thunderbird_, _Arthur Rogers_, _Nellie Brush_, and _Windjammer_ (soon
to be wrecked on Easter Island).
From Sullivan Bay we sailed up the coast of James and around to the lee,
in order to spend the night in Buccaneer Bay before proceeding on to
James Bay and our rendezvous with _Valinda_. We dropped anchor right in
the middle of the bay, in seven fathoms, and Ted and I went ashore with
guns to try our luck at varying the diet of canned corn beef. There was
no need to hunt for goats here, as we had done on the Barrier Reef—they
came to us. A large herd on the beach merely looked curiously at us as
we dragged the dinghy up on the land, while on the ridge above, about
200 yards away, a herd of cattle peered down. We walked over to the
goats and murdered one. They were standing in shoulder-high grass, and
it wasn’t until we had made the kill that we discovered that we now had
an orphan on our hands, a very young kid which nevertheless gave Ted
quite a run before he was able to chase it down. We carried the carcass
to the boat and tethered the baby nearby, while we completed our
explorations.
Up the large gully we found plenty of iguanas, so tame they had to be
shooed aside. We knew how ubiquitous these creatures were—back at
Academy Bay we had once counted twenty-one, sleeping on the porch of
Angermeyer’s house, while a couple more had sneaked into the living
room! In the shallow caves under the banks we flushed a mother goat and
twin babies, who reluctantly rose and made a token retreat until we
passed. When we got back to the dinghy, where the kid was tied up, we
found a large hawk had alighted on a branch just a few feet away. I
picked up a rock and tossed it at him. He shrugged. I tried again, this
time from a range of six feet, and hit the branch on which he was
sitting. He ruffled his feathers, gazing balefully at me. Then I went up
and pushed him off his perch with a stick, at which indignity he
squawked angrily and flew to another tree 50 feet away.