Rolf Blomberg
Rolf Blomberg (Stockholm,11 November 1912 – Quito, 8 December 1996) was a Swedish explorer, writer, photographer and filmmaker.
In 1934, he arrived for the first time to the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador. This expedition was followed by a whole life of travels and chronicles within a time span of fifty years.
During the Second World War, Blomberg stayed in Indonesia as a neutral war correspondent . He participated in resistance organizations.
After the war he returned to Ecuador and made efforts for a pacific contact with the Huaoranis Indians from the Ecuadorian jungle. He also made six dangerous expeditions looking for the Inca treasure hidden by Rumiñahui, presumably located at the LLanganates area. He discovered the world's largest toad, named after him, Bufo blombergi.
He produced 33 documentary films for the Swedish Television and was the leader of several expeditions to produce long films in Ecuador, Indonesia, Australia, Colombia, Brazil and Peru.
Rolf Blomberg was member of the Explorers Club of New York since 1955. He was also member of the Travelers Club of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo in Sweden.
Blomberg's literary production includes 20 books and hundreds of scientific articles published in important magazines such as Life, Sea Frontiers and National Geographic, among others. Many of his books were translated to Spanish, English, Danish, Norwegian, Russian, Czech and Polish.
As a photographer he was a member of the Full Hand Swedish group of photographers. With his very special Hasselblad camera, that was provided by Victor Hasselblad himself, he took more than 35,000 images from the whole globe, focusing on nature and a large diversity of ethnic groups.
Rolf Blomberg married 3 times. In 1940 he married the Swedish Karin Kajsa Abdon with whom he had a son: Staffan. The marriage lasted six years. His bond with Ecuador was strengthened through marriage with two Ecuadorian women. In 1948 he remarried to the Ecuadorian Emma Robinson, whom he had met in Java, after being rescued from a Japanese camp in World War II. They had two children, Anders and Marcela. Emma died in Stockholm 1952. Finally, in 1955 he married the Guayaquil painter Araceli Gilbert, whom he had met a few years earlier. He settled in Ecuador in 1968, till his death on December 8th, 1996. Araceli Gilbert is considered as one of the most important Ecuadorian artists from the 20st century.