A Caribbean Vacation Destination Unknown To Many
by: Gordon Steven
As a Caribbean Vacation Destination Los Roques an archipelago of Venezuela has a lot going for it. Los Roques Archipelago is about one hundred miles north of Caracas, and is a beautiful and ecologically important group of islands which was declared a National Park some thirty five years ago.
One of its attractions as a Caribbean Vacation Destination is its relative inaccessibility, it is probably one of the most remote places of the Caribbean Sea because you either have to sail there or get a flight from Caracas or Margarita or Maracaibo, not names that are very familiar to tourists, European ones at any rate.
What makes Los Roques such a wonderful place is the peace and quiet and the relative calmness of the incredibly colored sea. There are masses of lagoons, over fifty small islands, three hundred emerged sand banks and white coral sand, few of them ever occupied. The sky is almost permanently blue, there is very little rain, and is outside the Caribbean hurricane belt.
Added to this is the fact that Los Roques has the third largest coral reef in the world, this is as Christopher Columbus observed on discovering Los Roques in the fifteenth century a “True Paradise on Earth”.
As Los Roques is a National park this automatically prohibits building high rise hotels so visitors stay in local guesthouses on Gran Roques where you arrive by air or sea, and is the only place with permanent settlements. It is home to over one thousand two hundred people.
The visitors, and there are around fifty thousand a year, who come to Los Roques for a Caribbean vacation are normally attracted by the stunning beauty of the beaches, and of course to scuba dive and snorkel the coral reef. Sport fishing and windsurfing are other popular activities at Los Roques
The guesthouses, inns and Pousadas on Gran Roques tend to be very picturesque, and are probably a luxuriously refurbished old fisherman house. Lodging usually includes breakfast and dinner, and can range in price for as little as USD50 to USD200 per night per person. Some of the guesthouses also include in the price transfers to nearby islands, lunch, sunbeds, umbrellas and equipment for snorkeling.
You could also stay on a boat, or even camp in specially designated areas, but far and away the most popular option is to stay in a pousada.
Having said the only accommodation is on Gran Roques, you can get to a small cay called Rasqui where there is a small lodge with only two rooms, and is really a private island. You should also visit Water Cay known as Cayo de Agua, which is totally deserted and absolutely beautiful.
Why not visit Dos Mesquises where the Los Roques Scientific Foundation has a program involving adopting a turtle, and is well worth visiting.
Could you find a better Caribbean Vacation destination than Los Roques Venezuela, where there are no hurricanes, miles and miles of white sand beaches, countless uninhabited islands and coral reefs teeming with multicolored undersea life.
There’s simply nowhere like it in the Caribbean, but go now whilst it is still a secret.
One of its attractions as a Caribbean Vacation Destination is its relative inaccessibility, it is probably one of the most remote places of the Caribbean Sea because you either have to sail there or get a flight from Caracas or Margarita or Maracaibo, not names that are very familiar to tourists, European ones at any rate.
What makes Los Roques such a wonderful place is the peace and quiet and the relative calmness of the incredibly colored sea. There are masses of lagoons, over fifty small islands, three hundred emerged sand banks and white coral sand, few of them ever occupied. The sky is almost permanently blue, there is very little rain, and is outside the Caribbean hurricane belt.
Added to this is the fact that Los Roques has the third largest coral reef in the world, this is as Christopher Columbus observed on discovering Los Roques in the fifteenth century a “True Paradise on Earth”.
As Los Roques is a National park this automatically prohibits building high rise hotels so visitors stay in local guesthouses on Gran Roques where you arrive by air or sea, and is the only place with permanent settlements. It is home to over one thousand two hundred people.
The visitors, and there are around fifty thousand a year, who come to Los Roques for a Caribbean vacation are normally attracted by the stunning beauty of the beaches, and of course to scuba dive and snorkel the coral reef. Sport fishing and windsurfing are other popular activities at Los Roques
The guesthouses, inns and Pousadas on Gran Roques tend to be very picturesque, and are probably a luxuriously refurbished old fisherman house. Lodging usually includes breakfast and dinner, and can range in price for as little as USD50 to USD200 per night per person. Some of the guesthouses also include in the price transfers to nearby islands, lunch, sunbeds, umbrellas and equipment for snorkeling.
You could also stay on a boat, or even camp in specially designated areas, but far and away the most popular option is to stay in a pousada.
Having said the only accommodation is on Gran Roques, you can get to a small cay called Rasqui where there is a small lodge with only two rooms, and is really a private island. You should also visit Water Cay known as Cayo de Agua, which is totally deserted and absolutely beautiful.
Why not visit Dos Mesquises where the Los Roques Scientific Foundation has a program involving adopting a turtle, and is well worth visiting.
Could you find a better Caribbean Vacation destination than Los Roques Venezuela, where there are no hurricanes, miles and miles of white sand beaches, countless uninhabited islands and coral reefs teeming with multicolored undersea life.
There’s simply nowhere like it in the Caribbean, but go now whilst it is still a secret.
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