Old Providence

Thousands of black, claw snapping, slightly aggressive, red eyed crabs have left their holes deep in the island's clammy interior and are moving through the undergrowth down towards the sea. On arrival they will spawn and a few months later make a similarly dramatic exodus uphill and back to their jungle lairs prior to the September heat. The crabs are everywhere. Some have not made it across the badly paved road which runs the circumference of the island's shoreline. It is an amazing sight, a huge, living blanket of life, a single intelligence fulfilling a singular, biological purpose.

Old Providence is located 900 kilometres off the Colombian mainland and is actually closer to the Miskito coast of Nicaragua. It is part of a remote archipelago of islands which includes its larger sister island, St. Andres, which by stark contrast, has been devastated socially and environmentally by decades of unchecked migration from the Colombian mainland and laissez faire development.

Providence is sleepy, extraordinarily blessed with natural beauty and has a population of about 5000 locals. For some strange reason it was considered unsuitable for development by the Pinillo Government of the 1950s and luckily escaped the disasterous economic push which saw St Andreas become the most densely populated region in Colombia, in fact, in the whole of the Caribbean.

Allocated a tax "free port" in the 1950s St Andres attracted swarms of mainlanders and foreigners who bought up land cheaply displacing much of the black, English speaking population (known as Raizals), disrupting traditional forms of economic activity and destroying much of the fragile environment of the island. The total lack of urban planning and population explosion created problems in areas such as public health, housing and law and order. It also created a conflict between Raizals and Panas (the Spanish speaking newcomers from the Colombian mainland) and by the 1980s San Andres also had narcos using it as a base for drug trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

It receives the vast majority of tourists from the mainland and strangely enough, few venture the quick half hour plane ride on to Providence.

The most recent census showed that only about 30% of the population on St Andreas speaks English as its first or preferred language, whereas on Providence, more than 90% of residents speak English (or the island's particular brand of Creole English) as their mother tongue.

Islanders also speak Spanish fluently and it is amusing to hear Castillian words freely thrown into the pot of a grammatically and syntactically challenging variety of English.

"We's could naught ee'n duerm (sleep) in dee past for da wretch-id noise o' dat blast'id scamp'rin' " I am told by one of the locals about the crabs. (trans. "We could not even sleep in the past for the wretched noise of that blastered scampering")

She claims the islanders had to set the four legs of their beds in pans of water to stop the determined creatures from climbing up and :

" Us woz bitin' ar narices off dey!" (Narices Sp. = noses) (trans. "They were biting our noses off, they were!")


Over the next ten days I come to hear lots of local legend about this island of barely twenty square miles.

The crabs too have been woven into local myth and legend.

Conquering Spaniards, who were never very welcome on this far flung, Caribbean island, were said to have been scared off during their explorations by the crustaceans. During the rainy season the horny barked Cockspur trees are full of crabs which unwittingly dislodge savage ants. These fall and inflict painful bites on any unsuspecting passer-by ... as I unfortunately come to experience for myself on a long, hard trek to the summit of The Peak at the island's centre.


...Want to read the remainder of this story? It is available in my book, 'The House on Lopez Cotilla - A Journey through Latin America' (Kindle Direct Publising, 2012)


Two publications were consulted to help write this article:
The first was The History of the Settling Process of the Archipelago of San Andres and St.Catherine by Loraine Vollmer, Ediciones Archipelago, San Andres Isla, 1997 (out of print but kindly loaned to me by Sabina at Frenchy Paletas Arts Gallery, Freshwater).

The second was, A Legacy of Pirates by Jim Gordon Bull, trans. Anni Chapman, L. Vieco e Hijas Ltd, Medellin, 2008.

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