Santa Cruz – the begining

And it looks like “God had rained stones”. Those were the words used by the Bishop Tomas de Berlanga the year he landed on Galapagos, 10 of March, 1535. He was on his way to Peru from Panama and his vessel was carried by strong currents.

These words couldn’t be so descriptive. The Galapagos Islands are very dry down the coast, lava rocks and dry vegetation, cactus or volcanic ash everywhere. Characteristics that made the islands not too attractive to think about living there, therefore more than 300 years passed by until the islands called the attention of human beings as a place to stay for a while or to finally establish.

During those 300 years, human events that took place on the islands can only be compared to stories or scripts for Hollywood Movies. Pirates, treasures, murders and finally science.

Charles Darwin changed the optic under which Galapagos was considered, only a mere place to stop and try to find water. It was year 1835.

1832 February 12, was the day and year when the brand new country of Ecuador decided to claim the islands being Floreana the first islands to have a settlement, followed by San Cristobal, Santiago, Isabela and Santa Cruz, being the last.

The history of the Ecuadorian Galapagos is full of tragic events made this arid place the least attractive to live, but the world went through dramatic moments and wars which pushed people to look for new horizons seeking the Americas, and those who just wanted to have a real new beginning thought of Galapagos as a place to live.

Santa Cruz is the last one inhabited yet nowadays the largest population, around 18.000 inhabitants. People make a living of tourism, fishing, cattle raising and some agriculture. Here you find houses, roads, solar power energy, internet, local beer.

Who were the adventurers who opened the door for the rest of us?

Around the 1850’s some tortoise poachers from Isabela Island used to land on Santa Cruz to kill tortoises but never stayed here for unknown reasons. The highlands have a very good soil to grow anything you want, some abandoned orchards were found by workers left as punishment on the island like Camilo Casanova in 1904, San Cristobal island had a famous landlord by some considered and entrepreneur, by other a tyrant and punished his workers he considered traitors by abandoning them on the islands that were not inhabited. After his death some of his men left San Cristobal to establish on the other islands. Some few families got establishes on Santa Cruz Island, Felipe Lastra being the best known of them, followed by Elias Sanchez and many Europeans seeking for a new life.

In 1924 a group of Norwegians came to establish on Santa Cruz and started a cannery and perhaps agriculture with the dream to have either a quiet life or become rich with their new businesses. Most of them left a few years later after a couple of events that damaged their livelihood.

Apparently a German soldier, a war deserter got established on Santa Cruz, considered a strange person by the other young inhabitants, mostly men from different countries like New Zealand, Norway, Sweden…All of them seeking for an adventure. Amongst them was Mr. Gaston Goumaz, a Swiss gentleman and a member of these young bachelors who married much later in 1965 an Ecuadorian lady who is still alive on Santa Cruz Island, Mrs. Mercedes Reinel Villavicencio. They were in charged of the newly opened post office on the island. They had two daughters still living on Galapagos. Gaston and Mercedes had the first wedding on the islands.

Many of the Ecuadorian inhabitants came to Santa Cruz from San Cristobal Island with their children, some of the girls whom eventually became spouses of the young Europeans or young Ecuadorians. Many of them came maybe as little kids, babies or born on the other islands.

In general, there weren’t many women on the Santa Cruz, maybe the reason they had children with more than one husband, it seems that because of the lack of opportunities some men left the island and therefore these strong women began a relationship with another man.

I call these ladies MEGA grandmas, I consider myself lucky to have met at least two of them, strong women who no one will dare to get in a fight with, strong women who will protect their children with their life and soul, who will adopt newcomers and make sure those new inhabitants will have the necessary to live and stay.

Around the 40s and 50s groups of families began to arrive from mainland Ecuador seeking also for a new life, many reasons behind, like survivors of an earthquake or simply following an announcement published by the government offering free land and the only condition was to stay, many families came from the highlands of Ecuador.

Santa Cruz was the closest island to the only runway left by the United States after the Second World War and that made the arrival onto the island a lot easier and when the Islands were declared National Park, the headquarters were located here followed by the Darwin Research Center.

The town was still very small with a couple of paths now streets, no cars and no electricity and to get to highlands from the coast took three nights to arrive, three days walking on a lava trail or mud up to the knees, just to collect some vegetables or fruits to eat. There wasn’t much to do. The most popular one in town was anyone who could play the guitar or sing. Life was basically fishing, cattle raising and some agriculture, the basics to live.
Around the mid-80s only one commercial flight a week came to the archipelago, tourists were seeking the exotic nature that inspired Darwin, his Theory of Natural Selection. The feeling of having a wild innocent animal in front became a story worth to tell…Tourism began.

One night of August in 1985, the town welcomed more tourists than the few basic hotels could shelter. I remember that they had to sleep on the park, it was worth the adventure.