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?”