Los Roques, against all odds

Thank God for Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela. Laugh at him showboating at the UN about the evils of America, sending impoverished Londoners cheap fuel for their buses, telling off his fat compaeros for eating too much. But love him for his little idiosyncratic ways, because they are keeping safe one of the Caribbean's best-kept secrets.

Three years ago he took his weekly Aló Presidente TV roadshow to Los Roques, an archipelago a half-hour's flight from Caracas. The live show has no script. Chávez just talks and sometimes sings, about whatever comes into his head.

After 20 minutes, Los Roqueos started pelting him with tomatoes. Chávez pulled the plug and stropped off, telling the ingrate locals the islands would be getting nada in way of government help for their impertinence. And certainly no cash for attracting tourists. So that's why the islands have fallen off the tourist map.

Tucked away amid chaos

Caracas airport did nothing to dispel the gnawing sensation that my friend Carolyn and I weren't going to find our way to Los Roques. It was a holiday weekend and there was chaos in the terminal.

The departure board bore witness to a Venezuelan diaspora — there were flights to Miami and Houston, Moscow and Havana. But there was no sign of a flight to Los Roques. Finally we discovered a tiny doughnut concession/airline desk tucked away in a corner of the terminal, surrounded by a crowd of shouting Venezuelans: check-in.

Two dozen of us were bussed out beyond the new Airbus 320s, ageing Boeing 737s and terrifyingly doddery DC9s, to a tired but sturdy turbo-prop. After 30 minutes a necklace of islands appeared in the dark blue water. Specks of sand and shrub, ringed by turquoise lagoons. There was no sign of an airstrip but the aircraft banked sharply and fell steeply towards the sea. We skimmed a few metres over the masts of a couple of yachts and dropped on to the tarmac on the island of Gran Roque.

We were confronted on the ground by the full force of Chávez's police state — a dozing sniffer dog which only raised an eyelid when a tourist tore open a packet of crisps.

A man appeared with a trolley and took us to our posada (a small guesthouse) nearby. Then we were put on a speedboat, taken to a desert island and abandoned. Castaways. Nothing but us, a huge stretch of empty beach of the softest, whitest sand and a blue, blue sea. And the sun canopy, chairs and cool box our guesthouse had kindly provided as our desert-island luxury.

We laid out towels on our seats, sat down and surveyed the scene for a few minutes. Carolyn pretended to read her book while I splashed around in the water. Then we dived into our cool box, pulling out beverages, crisps and sandwiches — like excited children on a school trip.

I went for another swim while Carolyn fell asleep. We weren't going to be picked up by the boat for another four hours. As we lazed around on the beach, the speedboat came back on time but far too early.

Los Roques only really registers on the tourist radar in one country outside Venezuela. Italians discovered the islands a couple of decades ago and bought houses in Gran Roque. Some were turned into posadas and more Italians came. Now there are a couple of dozen posadas to be found on the fishing village's unmade, sandy streets of brightly coloured buildings, almost all run by Italians.

Flavours to savour

We were staying at Posada Albacora, with three guest rooms and a roof terrace where we ate fantastic island food with an Italian flavour: zucchini carpaccio, marinated barracuda and a mango mousse. From below came the sounds of Caribbean street life. Our meal was punctuated by power cuts; a late-night wander to find fruit juice was conducted by torchlight.

Each day we had our choice of islands to explore. Our favourite was Crasqui, which was only 20 minutes from Gran Roque. We didn't have it to ourselves but that was part of the fun. On the beaches, men took pictures of their wives. Everyone seemed happy and it was like stepping into paradise.