Welcome to my 9th blog post from the
A work opportunity
First of all, I apologise for the length of time that has passed since my last blog entry. I had a few weekends of ill health at the beginning of the month, didn't get out much and wasn’t really inspired to write only about work. I have also had a difficult decision to make regarding a work opportunity that would keep me away from my partner back in
The position, first sounded at the end of August, has now almost been approved locally and an offer should be on the table very soon. Regardless of what happens, I head back to
Recent work has revolved around the fishing sites database I have been working on for a while now. The sites need to tie in with all the spatially available fisheries data at the best scale available, i.e. where exact coordinates aren’t available for a monitoring event the next best ‘resolution’ are the central (base) coordinates for the fishing site or, failing mention of a fishing site, the island the monitoring event occurred at (the lowest ‘resolution’).
Day trips and intrigue
I am going out on a few last trips in case the contract doesn’t go through here and one 
of my recent trips was out to
Without giving away too much of the story, 3 groups of settlers, mostly from Germany, arriv
ed on
Before they left
They adapted well to the harsh volcanic environment and created a vast 
garden and built a house in the midst of a largely arid landscape next to a spring - one of the few water sources available on the island. Their exploits were well documented back in 
The Ritter/Dore camp didn’t particularly get on well with the new down-to-earth arrivals and Friedrich considered his own philosophical ramblings above their level of understanding. Though they generally kept to themselves, they would, however, become allies for the most part in having to deal with some of the events that were to occur after the arrival of the Austrian ‘Baroness’, who arrived a few months after the Wittmers and initially stayed at abandoned Norwegian buildings at Post Office Bay.
The Baroness had arrived with her two German lovers and an Ecuadorian contracted to help the group build a luxury hotel they planned to call the ‘Hacienda Paradiso’. Soon after their arrival, trouble started brewing as there were accusations of thefts and mail tampering. The thefts were mostly of gifts that were left behind for a particular group of settlers by passing boats. Most of these gifts and the mail were left at Post Office Bay (hence the name) and generally the Baroness was implicated when things went missing as she was the one who usually promised to pass on these gifts and also had access to the mail.
Feelings of resentment were starting to grow amongst the various groups, but differences were briefly put aside as the first native to Floreana, Rolf Wittmer, 
was born. Later, a sequence of events transpired that haven’t been properly explained to this day. It involves a spurned lover turned slave and the mysterious disappearance of his former lover and her ‘new’ partner, a death from poisoning, and the eventual discovery of mummified bodies on a remote
rest…
Apparently, Rolf Wittmer and his sister Floreanita (along with their respective families) still live in the islands. Margret Wittmer continued to live on Floreana until she passed away in 2000 at the age of 96 and wrote a book about her experiences called ‘Floreana: A Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Galapagos’, which I have yet to read.
I was very interested in seeing what Floreana was like based on the descriptions in the book, especially in trying to determine where each of the respective ‘camps’ were located. The day tour I took started off badly when it looked like we might have to 
turn the boat around after engine trouble, but it turned out a new oil filter was all that was required. The advantage of this was that we moved off again relatively slowly and saw some Waved Albatrosses up reasonably close. Once on Floreana the first part of the trip involved taking a bus inland to the highlands. In hindsight I could have borrowed the GPS unit used by the crew on our tour boat to pinpoint the location of some the sites from the book and perhaps put them 
onto a map.
We explored the area around where the Wittmers had lived for 20+ years, namely the pirate caves, ruins of their various homes, and the nearby springs (see the photo of me in one of the caves). I also got a rough idea of where Ritter/Dore and the Baroness had their homes. After lunch, we motored around to Devil’s Crown and
Back on Santa Cruz I finally saw a Blue-footed Booby up close - something I 
had been hoping for since I
arrived. I have also been on another dive
trip to Gordon Rocks, where the visibility wasn’t great and I didn’t see as much as I had hoped for. This weekend the plan is to go to
I guess you’ll know in the next installment whether I ended up staying or not!
Till then…
Pete
Isabela Island - On the way to Volcán Chico
Isabela Island - close encounter
CDRS - Marine Iguanas in the morning sun 1
CDRS - Female Frigate Bird