Floreana
A Woman's Pilgrimage to the Galapagos
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Embark alongside Margret Wittmer on her journey to the Galapagos to settle the island of Floreana in this remarkable first-hand account.
600 miles from the mainland of Ecuador, Wittmer and her family traveled for weeks to Floreana in the early 1930s. Only after battling the tides for three days did they reach the shore; they were seeking a new life, after leaving everything in Germany for a place not yet touched by civilization.
From living in an abandoned cave previously occupied by pirates, to planting their first garden and finding it torn up by wild boars, Wittmer provides a touching account of finding beauty on a tropical island that is constantly tempered by ill-fated attempts at everyday life in this new world.
The 56 years detailed in this memoir recount stories about a mysterious disappearance on the island to a missed opportunity to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt; they are full of exotic adventures, and the joys and tragedies of a lifetime.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although the adventure detailed in this autobiography is extraordinary, the account itself is rendered less so by the author's emphasis on personalities over events, with a humorless determination to expose the flaws in others, and by her lack of introspection about her role as a pioneer/explorer. In 1932, when Wittmer (then pregnant), her husband, Heinz, and his son, Harry--Germans in search of an Edenesque environment--arrived on Floreana, a remote island in the Galapagos, they first dwelled in caves once inhabited by pirates, the ``roads'' were tracks made by wild donkeys and their only neighbors were a misanthropic back-to-nature theorist and his disciple. The Wittmers learned self-sufficiency by doing--and sometimes by doing again, as when wild bulls tore up crops or they discovered they were thatching their roof the wrong way and it was not watertight. Soon an eccentric baroness mysteriously appears, proclaims herself the island's ``empress'' and just as mysteriously disappears, leaving a shooting in her wake. President Roosevelt even came to visit them (although they missed him), and they entertained Thor Heyerdahl's archeological expedition. Wittmer still resides on the island she settled. ( May )
