Araya

Araya sits at the western tip of its namesake peninsula on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. The setting is arid and dry, gaining definition from extensive salt flats, beaches and a long view over the sea. Salt made the peninsula valuable beyond its sparse land: nearby Cubagua and Margarita supplied pearls, while Araya held the country’s largest salt plains. From about 1599 Dutch ships illegally loaded salt there, drawing Spanish attention to control of the coast; a Spanish fleet was sent in 1605, and after the Dutch returned the Spanish established a fort and garrison in the early 1620s.

The Spanish built the Araya Fortress of beige-brown stone to defend the town, peninsula and salt grounds against pirates and rival traders. A hurricane eventually destroyed the area and the reserves were lost, leaving the fortification abandoned. Scientific travellers also visited these waters. Pehr Löfling studied marine bioluminescence from a ship offshore in 1754, and Alexander von Humboldt examined the ruined castle in 1799 during his broad scientific expedition.