Qualla: Gorgona Island

Gorgona Island: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mateo.gable, CC BY-SA 3.0. Francisco Pizarro called it *inferno*. He arrived on this small Pacific island in 1527 with thirteen men, fleeing another island where the locals had made it clear he was not welcome. Gorgona was supposed to be a rest stop on the way to conquer Peru. It turned out to be something else entirely. The snakes were everywhere - fer-de-lances, coral snakes, creatures that took Spaniards down one by one over seven months of waiting for a supply ship that was slow to arrive. Pizarro named the island after Medusa, the Gorgon of Greek myth whose hair was living snakes. The name stuck. Five centuries later, the snakes are still here. So are komatiites from the age of dinosaurs, the only all-blue anole lizard in the world, a humpback whale nursery, and the ghost of a prison that Colombians called their Alcatraz.

Read more: Gorgona Island on Qualla

Image: Mateo.gable | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gorgona Island: The Island Before the Spaniards

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Milenioscuro, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before Pizarro, Gorgona was inhabited. Archaeological remains dating to about 1300 AD mark it as a seat of the Guna people - expert sailors and goldsmiths whose descendants still live in Panama's Guna Yala region and parts of coastal Colombia. They fished, farmed, and worked...

Read more: Gorgona Island on Qualla

Image: Milenioscuro | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gorgona Island: Colombia's Alcatraz

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tobias Balzer, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1959 the Colombian government converted the island into a high-security prison. The reasoning was unimaginative: surrounded by shark-patrolled water, crawling with venomous snakes, Gorgona looked like a place from which escape was impossible. The prison was built, according to...

Read more: Gorgona Island on Qualla

Image: Tobias Balzer | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gorgona Island: The Escape of September 1984

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) CONOCER at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. One man escaped. Daniel Camargo Barbosa - a serial rapist and murderer serving a life sentence - had studied the Pacific currents from the beach for years. On September 24, 1984, during the feast of the Virgin of Mercy when the guards' routines shifted, he hid in the brush and bu...

Read more: Gorgona Island on Qualla

Image: User: (WT-shared) CONOCER at wts wikivoyage | Public domain

Gorgona Island: Komatiites and the Chicxulub Glass

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mateo.gable, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gorgona is a geological oddity on a planetary scale. The island contains the youngest known komatiites on Earth - silica-poor lava flows that normally only occur in Archean rocks over 2.5 billion years old, when the planet's interior was much hotter. Gorgona's komatiites formed d...

Read more: Gorgona Island on Qualla

Image: Mateo.gable | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gorgona Island: The Blue Anole and the Humpbacks

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mateo.gable, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gorgona became a National Natural Park in 1984, and the jungle has largely reclaimed the prison buildings. Visitors need permission to come ashore. No more than 80 people can stay at a time. Camping is forbidden. Every visitor is assigned a guide - not for tourism, but because th...

Read more: Gorgona Island on Qualla

Image: Mateo.gable | CC BY-SA 3.0