Watching Ron Howard‘s Eden prompted me to wonder about what visiting Floreana (600 miles west of Ecuador) would be like today, and what it might have been like 93 years ago (i.e., 1932), which is when the original German settlers tried to establish a small community there.
If I were to visit Puerto Velazco Ibarra, the one and only Floreana village, located on the island’s west coast — my first question would be “how’s the wifi?” How many bars would I get on the iPhone? Or would I be dependent on the hotel wifi? Any kind of cable or satellite TV? And how’s the water supply?
The movie made me cringe, if you wanna know. My imagination had a difficult time with the grim facts of primitive Florean life.
The cabin-sized homes in the film had tons of amber-tinted candles, so how many wax candles did they bring with them?
What was the situation with ships from the mainland delivering much-needed stuff (canned foods, sugar, flour, rubbing alcohol, fresh underwear, rubber sandals)? Imagine what a freighter would charge for soap bars, for example, if it had to travel 600 miles from Guayaquil, the Ecuador coastal port.
As soon as Sydney Sweeney and whatsisname moved in with their stuff, urgent questions arose. Water being so precious they couldn’t possibly take baths, so they had to bathe in the surf, but how clean can you get without hot water? How many bars of lava soap did they bring with them, and how long would those bars last? Where or how did they take a dump?, and did they bring toilet paper with them, and if so how many rolls? Did they have toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, moisturizer, cologne, scissors, toenail clippers, wipes, dental floss, Aqua Velva, etc.? There was no dentist so if any kind of tooth infection manifested, they were on their own.
It couldn’t have been very comfortable. It might have been agonizing.
