Los Roques Archipelago
Archipiélago Los Roques
Interesting facts
- The ending -quí in island names such as Francisquí and Madrisquí comes from the English word key, meaning a small island.
- The only land mammal native to the archipelago is the greater bulldog bat.
- The Sebastopol lagoon in the south of the archipelago serves as a nursery for young lemon sharks.
- The central lagoon covers about 400 square kilometres, enclosed by barrier reefs some 24 km long on the east and 32 km on the south.
- The largest island is Cayo Grande at about 15 square kilometres, nearly nine times the size of inhabited Gran Roque.
- Scientists have recorded around 280 species of fish, 61 of coral, 60 of sponges and 92 of birds in the archipelago.
- Indigenous visitors from the mainland once harvested large sea snails known locally as botutos on the islands.
- Rainfall is scarce, about 250 millimetres a year, so the cays support cacti such as prickly pear and melon cactus alongside mangroves.
- Gran Roque's population has roughly tripled since 1941, when the island had just 484 inhabitants.
Why it is worth it
Los Roques is a scatter of some 350 islands, cays and islets in the Caribbean, about 128 km north of the Venezuelan coast at La Guaira. Seen from the air it is one of the great colour fields of the planet: a broad shallow lagoon in every shade from milky jade to electric turquoise, ringed by reefs where the water suddenly turns to deep navy, and dotted with low cays of blinding white sand. The land itself adds up to only about 40 square kilometres; almost everything else is reef, sandbank and sea.
The archipelago was declared a national park in 1972 and later listed as a Ramsar wetland. Around 1,500 square kilometres of coral surround the islands, with hundreds of species of fish, crustaceans and molluscs, mangroves on the lagoon edges, and four species of sea turtle nesting on the beaches. The park is divided into management zones that keep much of it off limits, which is part of why it still looks so untouched. Names such as Francisquí, Madrisquí, Crasquí and Cayo de Agua are each a small study in the same elements — a sand spit, a palm or two, a reef break and impossible water.
Gran Roque is the only inhabited island. Its village is home to around 1,500 people, many descended from fishermen who came over from Margarita Island. The islands' human story is old but thin: indigenous peoples came for salt and hunting, Spanish and Dutch claims followed in the colonial era, and the archipelago became a Venezuelan federal dependency in 1938.
Days here are spent being ferried by small boat from cay to cay, snorkelling over the reef edge and drifting over sand flats in water so clear the boat seems to float on air. Late afternoon, when the lagoon goes gold and the cays throw long shadows, is the time to be out on the water.
Getting there
The islands lie about 128 km off the coast; Simón Bolívar International Airport at Maiquetía (CCS) near Caracas is about 141 km away, and Caraballeda on the mainland coast about 138 km. Light aircraft from the mainland land at Los Roques Airport on Gran Roque; from there boats run out to the other cays.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Los Roques Archipelago is a federal dependency of Venezuela consisting of approximately 350 islands, cays, and islets in a total area of 40.61 km2 (15.68 mi2). The archipelago is located 128 km (80 mi) directly north of the port of La Guaira, in the Caribbean Sea.
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