Qualla: Saona Island

Saona Island: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two names tell the story. The Taino called it Adamanay. Columbus renamed it Saona in May 1494, honoring his friend Michele da Cuneo's hometown of Savona, Italy. But there is a third name hiding in the linguistics: some scholars trace Saona to the Macoris word sa-ona, meaning "full of bats." Whether the island belongs to its indigenous past, its colonial christening, or the creatures that have always roosted in its caves depends on whom you ask -- and when you visit.

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Image: Oleg Yunakov | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saona Island: The Cave and the Cacique

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danu Widjajanto, CC BY-SA 4.0. Inside Cueva de Cotubanama, pre-Columbian pictographs and petroglyphs mark the walls -- evidence that this 110-square-kilometer island off the Dominican Republic's southeast coast was not wilderness to the Taino but home. Columbus landed here during his second voyage to the Ameri...

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Image: Danu Widjajanto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saona Island: Shipwrecks and Empty Centuries

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0. The waters around Saona collected ships the way the caves collected bats. At least three vessels wrecked on the island's reefs during the early Spanish colonial period, driven ashore by storms or stripped by pirates who knew these passages well. But no settlement took root. The i...

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Image: Oleg Yunakov | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saona Island: Mangroves and Mollusks

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saona sits within Cotubanama National Park, and its ecosystems are dense with life. Four species of neotropical mangrove -- red, white, black, and button -- line the Catuano Channel that separates the island from the mainland. Inland, palm forests give way to lowland rainforest a...

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Image: Oleg Yunakov | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saona Island: Lights, Camera, Caribbean

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hollywood discovered what the Taino always knew: Saona photographs beautifully. Parts of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl were filmed here in 2003, and scenes from The Blue Lagoon used the island's beaches as backdrop. The film crews are long gone, but the t...

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Image: Oleg Yunakov | CC BY-SA 4.0