Chacachacare

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Chacachacare
Map from 1927
Map from 1927
Waters Dragon's Mouth Strait
Gulf of Paria
Caribbean Sea
Archipelago Bocas Islands
Geographical location 10 ° 41 ′  N , 61 ° 45 ′  W Coordinates: 10 ° 41 ′  N , 61 ° 45 ′  W
Chacachacare (Trinidad and Tobago)
Chacachacare
length 16 km
width 3 km
surface 3.6 km²
Residents uninhabited

Chacachacare is an island belonging to Trinidad and Tobago belonging to the Bocas Islands group in the Dragon's Mouth Strait (Bocas del Dragón), which form the northern boundary of the Gulf of Paria to the Caribbean Sea . Administratively, the island of Chacachacare belongs to the Diego Martin region .

geography

Chacachacare is off Chaguaramas in the northwest of the island of Trinidad . Trinidad is only separated from mainland Venezuela by the Boca Grande strait, the widest of the Bocas del Dragón. The distance to the Venezuelan mainland at Punta Peñas is 10.7 km and to Isla de Patos 10.3 km. Chacachacare is separated from the neighboring island of Huevos to the east by Boca de Navios , which is almost 1300 meters wide .

In the middle, the island is almost divided into two by the large Chacachacare Bay in the east and La Tinta Bay in the west. The north and south are only connected by a 70 meter wide isthmus.

history

The discovery of a ceramic shard in 1925 indicates that Chacachacare was visited at least occasionally by Indian peoples in prehistoric times.

The island was "discovered" in the modern sense on August 12, 1498 by Christopher Columbus as part of his third voyage of discovery. He gave it the name "El Caracol", the snail, because of its horseshoe-shaped coastline . In the 18th century, Chacachacare became Trinidad's main cotton growing area. Almost 60 tons of cotton were exported in 1783 alone. In 1813, Santiago Mariño , whose parents owned a plantation on Chacachacare, used the island as a base for a campaign against the Venezuelan mainland as part of the wars of independence for Venezuela .

From the 1830s, Chacachacare served as the basis for commercial whaling. Whaling as an economic factor increased significantly after the cotton trade was no longer profitable from the middle of the 19th century. Until the beginning of the 20th century, whales were commercially cut up and processed on Chacachacare. From 1922 onwards, the island of Cocorite became a leper colony in Trinidad, and nuns who cared for the sick also settled there. During the Second World War from 1942 onwards, up to 1,000 US Marines were temporarily stationed on the island. In the 1980s, the island was abandoned after the last leprosy patients were relocated to Port of Spain and the nuns' quarters were subsequently abandoned. Today Chacachacare only serves as a destination for the "down the islands" excursions, boat tours to the Bocas Islands in the northwest of Trinidad, which are popular with the locals. The island is only temporarily inhabited by the staff of a lighthouse and a Hindu temple. The temple was built in 1945. The lighthouse dates from 1896, is 15 meters high and stands on a 236 meter high hill.

In 1999, the US real estate tycoon Donald Trump determined the possibility of setting up a casino with an adjoining hotel on the island as part of the Miss Universe elections taking place in Trinidad at the time, but it remained at the planning stage. In 2011, an episode of the US TV series Ghost Hunters International was broadcast on Chacachacare .

Flora and fauna

Large parts of the island are covered in dry forest, which was explored in the 1940s by British forest scientist John Stanley Beard. The highly poisonous manchinel tree grows in the bay in the interior of the island . Cacti and aloes grow on the cliffs on the south bank . Everywhere there are overgrown cotton plants and ebony plants called "butterwood".

Chacachacare is home to one of the few cruel populations of Trinidad. Numerous iguanas also live on the island.

gallery

  • The old nuns quarters

  • Dry forest

  • Chacachacare, in the background Venezuela

  • Cottage on Chacachacare, 1910

  • The Leper Colony, 1967

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hans EA Boos: The journey that is Chacachacare, in: The Field Naturalist 1/2010, available online
  2. ↑ TheWesterlyTT.com: Early “CHAC” - When Cotton was King ( Memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Angelo Bissessarsingh: A Walk Back in Time: Snapshots of the History of Trinidad & Tobago . Queen Bishop Publishing, Marabella 2015, ISBN 978-976-8255-17-4 , pp. 26 .
  4. ↑ History of Chaguaramas
  5. ↑ LighthouseDigest.com: Chacachacare Light. Retrieved May 10, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Mango Verde World Bird Guide: Saltator coerulescens. Retrieved February 12, 2016 .