Chacachacare

Former outcast colony, just another beautiful anchorage today

Small uninhabited island, 8 miles west of Trinida. Dominican nuns founded a colony here for leprosy patients in 1847. Within a few years they built a church, the small hospital, refectory and the doctors house. They ruled with an iron fist and men and women were strictly separated, which led to a violent uprising in the early twenties of the last century. The nuns lost and in the following years even had to deal with babies. In its hayday there were over a hundred people here. The age of antibiotics finally arrived in Trinidad and in 1984 the last patients, nuns and the doctor left.

Nobody is living here anymore and the jungle is taking over again. Left are the houses, quite derelict and vandalised, but still talking witnesses of a time gone by. Vivid pictures of the people who once lived here, worked here and suffered come to your mind. We would have loved to hear the stories these walls could tell...

For us Chaca is a nice, idyllic and lonely anchorage after the buzz of Trinidad. 2 days later the wind clocks to the south with gusts to 45 kts and we just about manage to get out of this mousetrap.