La Tortuga Island

La Tortuga Island ("Isla La Tortuga" in Spanish) is an uninhabited island dependency of the government of Venezuela. It is part of a chain of islands that include the Tortuguillas, the Palaquines, and others.

History

It was discovered in 1499 by Alonso de Ojeda. On his second trip, together with Amerigo Vespucci, the island was named "La isla La Tortuga" by Amerigo Vespucci because of the enormous presence of turtles on the island.

It used to be a refuge of pirates in the 17th century, although it must not be confused with Tortuga ("Île de la Tortue") near Haiti, which is famous in the literature of piracy in the Caribbean. The pirate Henry Morgan prepared some of his famous incursions on the coasts of Venezuela on the island.

The island was populated by the Dutch who possibly exploited the salt evaporation ponds on the east of the island as of the 1550s. They were definitively expelled in 1631 when the governor of Cumaná destroyed their facilities and flooded the salt pans.

Since then the island has not had a permanent population and its location and morphology have remained untouched, which makes the island one of the last somewhat virgin places of Venezuela. There is tourism in this island.