Treasures of an island

Stories of shipwrecks and pirates and legends of hidden treasures never found are both the reality and imagined history of the Isle of Youth (formerly Isle of Pines).

It is said this was the setting for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and certainly the story’s descriptions coincide with the location and geography of a place distinguished for its citrus production and marble quarries.

The isle also possesses enormously valuable indigenous cave drawings at Punta del Este, not to mention the most important caves in the Antilles and the gorgeous black sands of Bibijagua beach, a result of the sea’s erosion of the marble rocks.

But all of these attractions pale when one learns that the Isle of Youth is the principal diving zone of the American continent and one of the richest worldwide.

Only 138 kilometers southeast of the city of Havana, its 2,200 square kilometers (with approximately 60,000 inhabitants) make it the second largest island of the Cuban archipelago and the largest of the Canarreos archipelago, to which it belongs.

Columbus named it Evangelist, when he discovered it June 13, 1492 during his second travels to the New World. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the island’s sparse population and thick vegetation made it a refuge of privateers and pirates.

British officials who explored the Island of Pines when their troops seized Havana in 1762, esteemed it “a little jewel of the southern seas.”