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.