Exploring Margarita Island, a beach heaven

Margarita Island lies off Venezuela's northeast coast, and on much of it the rum costs less than the mixer. The beaches run for miles. Crowds are scarce. It's called Isla Margarita, and you haven't heard much about it lately for a fairly good reason. Things are changing, though, and a Caribbean holiday here feels more like an adventure than a packaged week of buffets and wristbands.

The island has been on the holiday map for decades. In the 1970s the Venezuelan government made it a duty-free zone, and this sleepy place of fishermen and pearl divers turned into the spot where mainland Venezuelans came to shop, party and soak up the sun. By the nineties hotels were rising fast, charter flights were arriving from Europe and Canada, and Playa El Agua was already the beach you saw in the glossy brochures. Think all-inclusive resorts, German tour groups, cocktails with little umbrellas. Then came the lean decade, when Venezuela's economic collapse through the 2010s hit Margarita hard. Flights dried up. Large hotels shut their doors or kept only a skeleton staff on site, and visitors stopped coming within a season. For a while the island served as a warning example for the rest of the Caribbean.

Islands this beautiful tend to recover. Over the past few years Margarita has been quietly coming back. Plenty of everyday business now runs in US dollars, which makes things far easier for visitors, and returning Venezuelans from the diaspora have been putting money into restaurants, small hotels and beach bars. Hotels are reopening, flights are trickling back, and the island has the air of a place rediscovering its mojo. It also remains astonishingly cheap by Caribbean standards. You're not paying Antigua prices here.

The beaches are the main event. Margarita has more than fifty along its coast, and they're genuinely among the finest in the Caribbean. The water is that ridiculous shade of turquoise you assume has been photoshopped until you see it with your own eyes. The sand is soft, pale and squeaky underfoot. On a Tuesday in low season you can have enormous stretches of it entirely to yourself.

Playa El Agua is the famous one, and it earns the reputation: around four kilometres of golden sand backed by coconut palms, with a strip of beach bars and kiosks selling grilled fish, cold beers and piña coladas served in actual pineapples. The sea is gentle enough for a lazy swim, the vibe is lively without being rowdy, and the people-watching is superb. A couple of kilometres south, Playa Parguito draws a different crowd altogether. This is the surfers' beach, all rolling waves and golden sand hemmed in by a rocky headland, and it's brilliant for bodyboarding and surf lessons. Currents here run strong, so weaker swimmers should treat the water with respect. Come to watch the locals carve up the break, then have lunch at one of the beachfront restaurants.

Down near the airport, El Yaque is the one windsurfers and kitesurfers rave about. The trade winds blow steadily almost all year, the water stays shallow and flat for ages out from the shore, and the sky fills with colourful sails every afternoon. Even if you've never held a sail in your life, an evening visit is worth it just to watch the show with a mojito in hand. The little town behind the beach has a laid-back, flip-flops-and-board-shorts energy that's hard not to love.

Fancy somewhere quieter? Playa Caribe, up near Juan Griego, is a long sweep of white sand with barely any development. Playa Guacuco on the east coast keeps a properly local feel, with palm shade and excellent fried fish. At the island's northeastern tip, Manzanillo is a working fishing village with a calm crescent bay where you can eat snapper that was swimming that morning, bought straight off the boat. For sunset, head to Juan Griego on the northwest coast, where the sun drops into the bay behind an old Spanish fort and the fishing boats bob about in the golden light. The seafront restaurants do a roaring trade in sundowners. It's the kind of sunset that quiets a bar for a minute or two.

And then there's La Restinga, a national park on the skinny isthmus joining the island's two halves. You pile into a little motorboat and putter through tunnels of mangrove, the water tea-coloured and still, herons watching from the roots, before popping out onto a long bar of crushed shell and calm, shallow sea. It's half beach trip, half nature safari. If you've got a spare day, take the boat over to Coche Island: white sand, gin-clear water, almost no development. It feels like the Caribbean of fifty years ago.

Beyond the sand, Margarita isn't just beaches, though you'd be forgiven for never leaving them. Porlamar is the buzzing main city, full of shops (that duty-free status still applies), markets, street food and nightlife. It's chaotic and loud and great fun for an afternoon. Pampatar, just along the coast, is prettier and calmer, with a seafront promenade and the handsome Castillo de San Carlos de Borromeo, a seventeenth-century fort built to keep pirates at bay. The capital, La Asunción, sits in a green valley inland and has its own fortress, the Castillo de Santa Rosa, where the independence heroine Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi was once held prisoner. The views from the ramparts over the valley repay the climb on their own. Nearby in El Valle del Espíritu Santo, the Basílica de la Virgen del Valle draws pilgrims from all over Venezuela, and even if churches aren't your thing, the devotion on display is genuinely moving.

For a total change of scene, drive up into Cerro El Copey national park, a proper cloud forest in the island's green heart, all mist, orchids and birdsong, with views down to both coasts. Or head west to the Macanao peninsula, the island's wild side, where scrubby hills roll down to empty beaches and the phone signal gives up entirely.

Accommodation runs the full range. The big all-inclusive resorts around Playa El Agua, places like the Hesperia and Sunsol, have weathered the lean years and offer pools, buffets and beachfront bars at prices that would barely cover a mid-range hotel elsewhere in the Caribbean. If you'd rather something with more character, look at the posadas, small family-run guesthouses scattered around the island, or rent an apartment in Porlamar or Pampatar. El Yaque has a cluster of hostels and small hotels aimed at the windsurfing crowd, friendly and cheap.

Amenities are better than you might expect. Porlamar has proper shopping malls, decent supermarkets, pharmacies and clinics. Most restaurants, hotels and tour operators price things in dollars and take cards or cash. That said, bring plenty of US dollar bills in small denominations, because card machines can be temperamental and change is a constant headache.

Now, the food. Start the day with an arepa, a hot cornmeal cake split and stuffed with anything from shredded beef to black beans and salty white cheese, washed down with fresh mango juice. Lunch is all about the fish, usually a whole fried pargo with tostones, which are smashed, twice-fried plantains, and a simple salad. Try the empanadas de cazón, little fried pasties filled with baby shark, which taste far better than they sound. Oysters are a local speciality, shucked in front of you at beachside stalls with a squeeze of lime and a dash of hot sauce. Come evening, it's grilled lobster by candlelight, cold Polar beers, and rum cocktails that go down dangerously easily. A full seafood feast at a beach restaurant can cost less than a pizza back home.

Margarita isn't for everyone, mind. Infrastructure can be patchy, you'll want to keep your wits about you and take normal travel precautions, and the faded glory of the old resort strip isn't to every taste. But if you like your destinations with a bit of soul, if you'd rather swap polish for personality, Margarita is something special right now. Pristine beaches with nobody on them. Fish sold for pennies. The rest of the world will cotton on eventually. Go before they do. Sunrise over the Macanao hills turns the scrub a soft copper colour.