Los Roques is one of the very few coral atolls in the Atlantic: a ring of reef and sand of a kind you would expect in the South Pacific, about 130 kilometres north of the Venezuelan coast. It formed the way atolls do. Coral grew around a volcanic island, and as the volcano slowly sank the reef kept building upward, until all that stayed above water was the coral itself. Today the archipelago scatters some 350 low islands, cays and sandbars across a shallow lagoon of about 400 square kilometres, ringed by two long barrier reefs. Venezuela made it a national park in 1972, and at more than 2,000 square kilometres it is the largest marine reserve in the Caribbean. Only one island breaks the flat: Gran Roque, a 120-metre hill of rock that is the last of the drowned volcano, crowned by an old lighthouse and holding the archipelago's only village.
Gran Roque is also the only way in. Small planes land on its single strip from Caracas, there are no cars, and you cross the sand-lane village on foot in fifteen minutes. From there the days run on boats. Local peñeros ferry you out to empty cays where the water shades from ivory through turquoise to deep blue, and at Cayo de Agua a tongue of sand runs between two islets with clear water on both sides. Below the surface the reef is loud with parrotfish, nesting sea turtles and gliding manta rays, while the sand flats draw fly-fishers from around the world for their bonefish. Steady trade winds and knee-deep, glass-flat water make the archipelago one of the Caribbean's best kitesurfing grounds. Beyond Gran Roque's painted houses there is no development, electricity is rationed and the phone signal thin, so the loudest things out here are the wind and the water.