Margarita Island
A little bit more about "The Caribbean pearl"
Isla de Margarita is Venezuela's best known and most developed destination. Venezuelans come here in droves to take advantage of the island's status as a duty-free port, while Canadian, European, and Latin American travelers come to enjoy the warm sun, white sands, and turquoise waters of this small Caribbean island. In many ways, the pleasures to be had on Isla de Margarita mirror and compete with those offered in Cancún, Punta Cana, and other resort destinations around the Caribbean. Still, Margarita remains relatively undiscovered and unexplored by Americans.
Margarita "The Caribbean pearl". From the very beginning the island always had it's arms open to everyone, with generosity and kindness. This land welcomes, feeds and provides all cures for navigators either coming or going. An island of relaxation and love where nobody leaves completely because of the best feelings stay behind.
Margarita offers lots of sunshine, a tropical climate, multiple color surfaces with zones of leafy green mountains, xerophyte vegetation, wonderful weather, miles and miles of intense blue beaches, solitary places where you can find yourself again, very cosmopolitan cities and quaint villages with their customs and traditions still intact.
On Margarita itself, a well-planned day might take you, in the early morning, to the Conejero market district in Porlamar for some good buys in inexpensive clothing and beach gear, then by taxi to Playa el Agua, about 14 miles to the north, where a three-mile strand of coconut palms and blond sand is dotted with kiosks serving red snapper and sometimes lobster.
Weather
In the year of 2007 Isla Margarita had clear and sunny weather 340 of these days! This means 93.2 % of the days with 6 hours of sun or more! Isla Margarita is like a desert island. There have been years when the island had no measurable rain for several months.
The daytimes temperatures is on the average of 30ºC (86ºF) and the nights is never below 20ºC (68ºF). Even in the summer months when the temperature may reach 99F (36C) the cooling breezes keep the climate very liveable.
A major advantage is that Isla de Margarita is out of the hurricane belt making it a year-round destination. Another advantage is that Isla Margarita don´t have a rainy season where it ceaselessly rains for days.
But if the island is going to have some rain it is most likely to happen in the middle of the summer or from the middle of November until the beginning of January. Commonly the rain don´t last more than some hours and then the sunny weather comes back.
This means that the climate of the island is nearly perfect if you are looking for a glorious sunny vacation or just a peaceful and quite renergizing trip.
History
In 1498, Christopher Columbus discovered Margarita Island. The local natives, named Guaiqueries, received the conquering Spaniards with open arms unaware that they later would become slaves of their own wealth.
Pearls represented almost a third of all New World tribute to the Spanish Crown. Margarita Island had to be fortified against the increasing threat of pirate attacks, and several of these fortifications remain today. In 1561, the island was seized by Lope de Aguirre, a notoriously violent and rebellious conquistador who held the islanders in a grip of terror until he returned to the mainland in an attempt to take Panama from the Spanish crown.
Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi, a Venezuelan heroine.
In 1814, the islanders fought successfully for independence from the Spanish, and Isla Margarita became the first free territory in Venezuela. That same year, Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi was kidnapped by the Spaniards for over three years. It was on Margarita Island that Simon Bolivar, later called the Libertador, was confirmed as Commander in Chief of the new republic, la gran Colombia. From there he started to free Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia from the Spanish Crown.
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