[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Claire Boobbyer (BBC Journey) says, “From pirate haven to ecological hotspot, Cuba’s “Treasure Island” is a far-flung gem house to a few of the Caribbean’s rarest animals.”
A pirate hideaway, a one-time US colony and a biodiverse hotspot house to endangered crocs, parrots, sharks and turtles, Cuba’s Isla de la Juventud is an enigma. The Caribbean nation’s largest offshore island lies 60 miles south off the mainland and is a comma-shaped arc of palm and pine bushes, citrus groves and marble hills that few guests ever see.
In centuries previous, actual pirates of the Caribbean slipped into the island’s coves, with boats bearing illicit booty. Right now, guests come from the port of Batabanó, 56km south of Havana, on a three-hour ferry journey that prices $0.50 Cuban Pesos (£0.35) and requires reserving a month prematurely, or securing a seat on irregular flights.
Those that make the journey normally come to dive off the south-western tip, Punta Francés, staying on the island’s one resort. Or, they tour the island’s panopticon jail, Presidio Modelo (now an eerie museum), the place Cuba’s late Communist chief Fidel Castro was incarcerated in 1953 for attacking military barracks – an occasion that triggered the 1959 Cuban Revolution. However past its few sights, the island’s sugar-soft seashores, distinctive tradition and historical past, and guarded wildlife havens supply a vastly totally different Cuban expertise than the crumbling colonial facades and raucous rum bars of Havana.
When Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic for a second time in 1493, he dropped anchor near the island that may later show to be the proper refuge for pirates. From the 1850s, Francis Drake, Henry Morgan and their ilk ransacked the Spanish Crown’s treasure fleet as ships, bulging with gems, silver and spices, sailed previous La Isla enroute from the tip of South America to Havana. Due to this, La Isla was dubbed each “Island of Pirates” and “Treasure Island”. It was even thought to have impressed Robert Louis Stevenson’s traditional ebook, Treasure Island.
Within the late Nineteen Seventies, Fidel Castro opened dozens of universities on the island for overseas college students, and in 1978, the island was renamed Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth) from Isla de Pinos (Isle of Pines). The faculties closed within the late Nineteen Nineties, however their legacy stays within the island’s identify.
[. . .] To enter the protected space, travellers should first get hold of permission from the company Ecotur or a neighborhood B&B and go a checkpoint on the northern restrict so officers can monitor the trafficking of wildlife, folks and medicines. 3 times per week, a bare-bones bus jangles three hours south from the island’s capital, Nueva Gerona, by means of forest rooted in limestone karst. Inside its tangled embrace is Ciénaga de Lanier (Lanier swamp), refuge of the critically endangered Cuban crocodile. The elusive crocs had been virtually worn out within the twentieth Century by hearth, drought and looking. Just a few specimens had been found in 1977 and a reintroduction programme launched in 1987.
“We all know American crocodiles and the launched spectacled caiman are there, however within the final two expeditions, our consultants haven’t seen Cuban crocodiles within the wild,” mentioned Yanet Forneiro Martín-Viaña,senior conservation specialist for Flora y Fauna, which manages the island’s southern APRM zone.
Forneiro Martín-Viaña is assured although. “We proceed to seek for [Cuban crocodiles] and reintroduce extra people into the swamp,” she mentioned. “We all know this space has nice potential for the habitat of this species.” [. . .]
In response to Dr Julia Azanza Ricardo, a turtle knowledgeable and professor on the Greater Institute of Applied sciences and Utilized Sciences of the College of Havana, Guanal is likely one of the most vital nesting areas in Cuba. Nonetheless, local weather change is threatening their future. Turtle gender is linked to the temperature of the nest throughout incubation, and the rising temperatures are leading to fewer males being born.
“Greater than 90% of turtles born in Cuba are feminine, Azanza mentioned. “In a short while, we count on to succeed in 100%. Once we began monitoring nest temperature 15 years in the past, they had been 28, 29, 30 levels. Now it’s 32, 33, 34. It should solely take an increase of two levels to succeed in 100%. If all males are worn out, then it’s the top of native populations after which the top of the species.” Options, Azanza defined, embrace vegetation shading by planting sure species of bushes, shifting nests to cooler spots or watering the sand. [. . .]
West of turtle nation and 86km south-west of Nueva Gerona is the village of Cocodrilo, essentially the most distant inhabited spot in Cuba. Based as Jacksonville after English-speaking Cayman Islanders settled it within the early twentieth Century, 122 households now stay in single-storey concrete and wood houses dealing with the ocean. Twenty-four-hour electrical energy solely arrived in 2001.
Right here, conservationist Reinaldo Borrego Hernández, often called “Nene”, runs a tourism and conservation mission, Consytur, along with his spouse, Yemmy. Nene’s mission is to protect and shield the coral reef, wildlife and nature of his house village.
“I’ve lived on this pure setting all my life, and my want to shield it’s in my blood,” mentioned Nene.
By staying in Nene’s B&B, Villa Arrecife (considered one of solely three B&Bs in Cocodrilo), guests assist fund conservation work targeted on amassing garbage from seashores and the seabed, capturing lionfish – an invasive species – and serving it to friends, and rising and planting new branches of critically endangered staghorn coral. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.bbc.com/journey/article/20221115-isla-de-la-juventud-cubas-remote-nature-paradise
[Photo above by Martin Llado/Getty Images; “Turtles” by Claire Boobbyer.]