Coche is between Margarita and the mainland
Click on the map for a Venezuela overview
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Coche
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Coche is between Margarita and the mainland Click on the map for a Venezuela overview |
Population: Less than 1000. Mostly fishermen.
Landscape: Semi-arid and flat. Some sand beaches but murky water.
Visited: September 20 - September 22
History: In 1528, the
pearl beds of Coche were developed by the Spanish, who used native slaves to
harvest the oysters. The pearls produced incredible wealth for a while, but at a
great cost. The Spanish slave masters used whips to drive the divers, and gave
them very scanty rations. The open sores from the whips did not receive
treatment, and the bleeding attracted many sharks. As the pearl beds began to
decline, the sharks became so prevalent that continued diving was almost
impossible.
Salt was also
discovered on Coche, and was also harvested unmercifully. Between salt and
pearls, Coche was a treasure trove of natural resources to the Spaniards. In
1529, Coche was producing about 820 pounds of pearls EACH
MONTH! This was an astounding amount from the rather small and
arid island.
On Christmas Day
of 1541, an earthquake and tsunami obliterated the settlement on Coche (it also
damaged other places in the area) and put an end to the use of the island by the
Spanish. Although pearl exploitation did eventually restart on Coche, it took three
and a half centuries. Another half century later (1944,) special legislation
enforcing conservation of the pearl beds went into effect, and no pearl fishing
has been permitted since 1962.
Coche passed
through the Venezuelan revolution essentially untouched. The only point of note
is that on April 25, 1815, the Spanish flagship carrying the General in command
of the 15,000 troops sent to quell the insurrection, sank in Coche's waters
without warning and still rests on the bottom. A small fishing village and
resort are currently located on Coche, which receives its water from a branch of
the pipeline that supplies Margarita.
(Amanda age 13) I'm not sure if we would have gone to Coche, south of Margarita, if all of our cruising-friends hadn't been there. The water was murky, day-charter boats came in every day about five at a time, and there's nothing on the island except for a resort and scrubby land. As it was, when we came down from Los Testigos, flying our spinnaker, all our friends with kids were there. It was a bit late in the day, but we went there anyway, enjoying the thought of a cool swim in a (non-salty!) pool.
See, the resort
there had a swimming pool, and they nicely let cruising boats use it, as long as
we bought drinks from them. At 600 Bolivars a soda (roughly 40 US cents), we
didn't find it a bad idea at all. I spent many an afternoon in there, swimming
with my friends.
One of the fun
things we did was have several bonfires on the beach. Well, they were supposed
to be bonfires -- they turned out more like small campfires. But that's not the
point. The first one we had was with a bunch of other cruising boats, most of
which had kids. So all the adults sat around and talked, while all of us kids
played beach soccer. For those of you who haven't played it before, it is very
sandy, and possibly painful. Painful, because no one has shoes or shin-pads, and
sandy because whenever someone kicks the ball too hard, it goes in the water,
and then it picks up a lot of sand, and that sand sticks to you whenever the
ball hits you. Quite a fun game, and I enjoyed it a lot because I hadn't played
soccer in about ten months.
 Coche Hotel pool. Rum punches were $.40 each. |
(Chris age 16) The only things that really made Coche worth visiting were all the other cruisers there (including many kids) and the thought of a real, freshwater swimming pool. When we arrived, we had no local currency, but the family on Pelican loaned us 20,000 Bs, (Thanks guys!) which is enough for a week or two there. Sadly, Coche's water is murky, it has essentially no supplies for yachts, and it doesn't offer many sights. When most of the cruising boats started to pick up and head over to Porlamar, Margarita, we went along.
(Sue)
We had a glorious sail to Coche from Los Testigos. We would normally have
stopped in Margarita, but we had several friends we wanted to meet in
Coche. Since this extended the sail to 65 miles, we got an early start,
leaving with 5 other boats (& passing them all). For the first several
hours, we had a screaming broad reach, with the wind off the beam at 20
knots. Then the wind backed and lightened a bit so we set our spinnaker
(the "'Chute"), which we flew all the way to the Coche buoy.
Ditto on what Chris says
-- though I would add that the water off Coche, while not clear, was pretty flat
and had fun with the sailing dinghy and windsurfer. It sure felt decadent to sit
around a lovely resort swimming pool drinking rum punches (40 cents) and
chatting with friends! We were there with Pelican, Scud, Ludmilla, and Golden
Sovereign -- all with teenagers! Cool! English was the common language for the
Swiss, American, and French kids.
 Ocelot sailing under our spinnaker |
(Jon) So, you might ask, if the hotel was so nice to yachties, why didn't we go back? Good question. It delves into a part of cruising we don't talk about much -- Safety.
A couple of weeks
after we got back from Mérida, 5 armed thugs in a piñero boarded a US cruising
boat anchored in Coche. They made a pretense of stealing the gear on
board, but in fact nothing that they took had any resale value. The net
result was that the interior was badly trashed, while the couple owning the boat
were held at gunpoint. (They sell a nasty sawed off shotgun here for
about $150). When the thugs left, they cut the starter cord of the dinghy to
prevent anyone following, but at the last moment, the guy who had been
advocating shooting the couple the whole time turned and shot the husband in the
knee.
We have a pretty
good communications net down here for this sort of thing. At 8:15 every
morning, Melodye on 2nd Millennium runs a "safety &
security" net, and most cruisers listen in. So the next morning, most
cruisers in the Caribbean knew of the shooting, and since then, very few boats
go back to Coche. The thugs are still at large, and it doesn't seem like
much is being done to bring them to justice.
So what happened
to the victims? Cruising friends immediately went to Coche (only 15 miles
from Porlamar) and helped bring the boat back. The husband was taken to
the hospital where he was stabilized and initial repairs were made. Once
he could leave the hospital, cruising friends helped them take the boat to
Trinidad, where the hospital facilities were believed to be better.
One sad thing Sue
& I have noticed is that there is much more theft & violence towards the
yachts than there was in the 1980s, all up and down these islands.
Mostly these are thefts of dinghies &/or outboards, or even just fishing
gear left on deck, but we never used to see anything like this in the
80's. This past year Porlamar was especially bad for thefts of outboards, and anyone who
didn't lift their dinghy (or motor) completely out of the water at night risked
losing it. The local Guardia seems much more concerned that everyone's
paperwork is satisfactory than personal safety. The thieves were averaging
about an outboard every week. In a strange twist, the very first night
after her husband was shot in Coche, when the wife was alone on her boat, someone climbed
on board in Porlamar, at 3:30am. She screamed into the radio (we'd been
keeping the VHF on 24 hours just for this) and about a dozen dinghies converged on
her boat. The thief jumped and swam for it, but he was quickly caught and
delivered to the Guardia (who were asleep...). We were anchored fairly
close, and heard his screams for several more hours, but we had no more thefts
in Porlamar for several months.
Coche had another
shooting incident just before Christmas, but the would-be thieves were scared
off before they got inside the boat. Unfortunately they got a shot off at the
husband though we don't know how serious his injuries were. It is believed these
thugs come from the western end of the Araya Peninsula, just south of Coche.
This area is renowned for it's nastiness, almost as though the old pirate
hang-out has left behind pirate descendents.
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