In a recent visit to Venezuela we decided to take a few days off from visiting with family and friends to experience the Los Roques archipelago. Declared a National Park in 1972, Los Roques is located about 128 kilometres north off the coast of Venezuela and has around 350 different cays or small islands magically decorated with coral reef, mangroves, white sand, and impossibly beautiful turquoise waters.

El Gran Roque is the largest island and also the only one that is populated, with around 1200 people living there. It has its own little air strip, a church, a school, one vehicle (the garbage truck) and a handful of unpaved streets where people walk barefoot on the sand.

That is where we landed after a very early 40-minute flight from Maiquetia Airport’s National Terminal on a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander, a very small plane operated by Chapi Air.

We made it there safely, but most likely we will not be flying with them again (my fiance has flown this plane before and he was not impressed, to say the least). The largest airline flying into Los Roques is Aerotuy, I think we’ll give them a try next time. Once we landed, Miguel from the posada (B&B) El Paraiso Azul was there to greet us and help us carry our stuff to the place we would call home for the next 2 nights. Once we paid the park fee (different for Venezuelan citizens and foreign visitors), we were officially in Los Roques!

We arranged our entire trip through this posada and that worked well for us for this first visit; we were also lucky enough to have the place to ourselves during our stay. There are many posadas in Los Roques, and they all seem to be very well-organized, offering a package which includes all your meals, non alcoholic drinks and transfers to the closest cays including chairs and a very-much-needed umbrella. After we ‘checked-in’ we were informed by our innkeeper Lucia that trips for the cays left at 9:30 am and dinners were at 7:00 pm. We changed, put on tons of sunblock (bring lots of it!), went off with Miguel to find Juan, our ‘lanchero’ (boatman) for the day and then we were off to Madrisquí. Once we got there Juan set us up with the chairs and umbrella, set our cooler with food and drinks in the shade and left us to enjoy this view for the day… absolute heaven!