Floreana Island is peaceful, barely inhabited, and almost unaltered by tourism. It is home to the original colonies of giant tortoises, although they were wiped out since, then repopulated, and now live largely on the Isabella and Santa Cruz islands.
What really sticks with me about Floreana island, however, is the mysterious case of the missing Baroness, and subsequent mysterious deaths, which reads like a real life murder mystery, though it has the annoying side effect of being real life - and therefore there is no Poirot character to gather us all in the parlour and tell us the answer over a sherry.
The island was originally inhabited solely by Dr Ritter and one of his patients, Dora, who moved there, both leaving spouses behind, to pursue an aesthetic lifestyle, strictly vegetarian and deliberately isolated. Dr Ritter wrote newspaper articles, which became best sellers back in Germany, and attracted new settlers in the form of the Wittmer family, who came here essentially because their young son had rheumatic fever and they hoped a new lifestyle in clean air and with careful diet might help him. They set up 'house' in the form of cave dwellings, Mrs Wittmer had her second baby, and all was peaceable, the Wittmers and Ritters keeping a respectful, but mutually helpful distance.
The peace was shattered, somewhat predictably, by the arrival of a glamorous sounding Baroness who arrived with her two lovers to set up a hotel.
You don't need many little gray cells to work out how well she fitted in with the aesthetic, quiet lifestyle being led by the others
Rumours abound about what happened in between, I hear tales of the baroness stealing from the other families, causing jealousy and distrust between them, and being a perfect generous hostess to her clients whilst treating her lovers and fellow islanders with spite, manipulation and disdain.
Whatever the truth was, the upshot was that the baroness and one of her lovers went mysteriously missing. The second lover was shipwrecked trying to find his way home and Dr Ritter died from eating poisoned food. And the most curious of all? The food in question, though tales do vary, appears to have been some form of meat.
And yet, my friends, do you not remember that this man was a strict vegetarian?
Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice, mixing her literary references between Lewis Carroll and Agatha Christie without apology.
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