After spending an entire day exploring the leper colony and nunnery on Chacachacare, which I have been writing about this last week, we got up the next morning and took a hike. We all wanted to hike to the top of the island and see the Chacachacare Lighthouse, which is an active lighthouse located on the north part of Chacachacare atop a hill at an elevation of 774 ft. The Chacachacare lighthouse was built in 1897 with masonry and is 49 feet tall. The white cylindrical shape tower has a balcony and a red lantern which is positioned at a height of 823 ft above sea level. The lighthouse emits one white flash in a ten seconds period visible up to 26 nautical miles.
We were told that there are still lighthouse keepers stationed there and they love when people bring them rum. Turns out this info is 8-10 years old, because we found the barracks devoid of people and there was clear evidence no one had lived there for a long time. Turns out the lighthouse was automated, and it appears the keepers did not take any of their stuff with them. We saw clothes hung up to dry, bed, a calendar, broken frig and TV, and other household things scattered about. We even found an abandoned truck halfway up the hill that must have broken down and was not worth trying to get back down and taken to Trinidad.
What we did see was an amazing view of…..South America! Trinidad sits only 10 or so miles from a Venezuela peninsula putting Chacachacare only five miles away from South America. I knew that Trinidad was geographically an extension of South America even though it is culturally part of the Caribbean, but it was not until I was looking at another continent that it really sank in. What a great hike!
