Floreana
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
The remarkable first-hand account of Margret Wittmer, who settled the island of Floreana in the Galapagos-600 miles from the mainland of Ecuador. It took Wittmer and her family weeks to travel to the island in 1932; they battled with the ties for three full days before they could land.
Wittmer and her husband left their home and family in Germany, seeking a new life in a place not yet touched by civilization. Their first home was a cave, previously abandoned by pirates. They planted their first garden, only to find it torn up continually by wild boars.
Five months pregnant when she arrived, Wittmer found the beauty of the tropical island constantly tempered by the traumas of attempting everyday life in a wild and lonely spot. From the mysterious disappearance of a stranger linked to another recluse on the island, to a missed opportunity to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 56 years recalled in this memoir 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 )
