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Italian cooking is very popular in Margarita.  Here is Bob with seafood pasta, forking a calamare (squid).

Another great place to eat is at Jack's Restaurant.  She is Thai, married to an American, and living in Margarita.  He works on boats and she manages the open-air restaurant on the beach near Juan's dock.  She serves all day long, breakfast, American hamburgers, sandwiches, seafood, and chicken.  Bob loves calamari or liver and onions.  Yuk!  I prefer the more plebeian hamburger or chicken salad or chicken stir-fry.  On Sundays when Jack's is closed, cruisers gather there to play dominoes.

Juan Baro is an agent who handles the paperwork for cruisers to check in and out of the country with customs and immigration.  Although he calls his operation Marina Juan, there are no slips but a pier with guard where cruisers can leave their dinghies and feel fairly certain that the dinghy will be there upon their return--a most valuable service in Venezuela!  Juan has two computers for Internet, telephone, fax, mailbox, water, shower, book swap, laundry, and taxi pick-up.  He also schedules a free bus on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to a supermarket and mall.  He can answer any question or refer you to someone who can.  Marina Juan is also the departing point for Bernardo's tours.

Juan goes out of his way to help cruisers in crisis.  One year he made arrangements for  our French friend Victor on Flojejoli who had an appendicitis attack in Los Testigos.  This  year he went out of his way on a Sunday to help Panacea when John was shot in Coche.   More details are in the section about John and Diane.

Pampatar of today is an official port of entry with customs and immigration offices but cruisers are asked not to anchor in its small bay.  Cruisers are directed to the next bay over at Porlamar, the largest town on the island.

The word Pampatar comes from the old Indian word, mompatare, meaning "close or near to salt."  Pampatar was selected as the site for the first village on the island because it was near the salt flats.  Salt was a commodity as valued as gold since, at that time, it was the only known method of preserving food.  Pampatar was also near the pearl beds at Cubagua.  Over the years, 40,000 tons of pearls were exported to Spain, worth more than all the gold sent to Spain from South America.  Salt and pearls made Pampatar a valuable site to plunder so pirates attacked frequently.  Spanish colonists constructed a fort from 1664-1684 to protect the town. 

The fort in Pampatar is being restored and is not yet representative of the original one which had columns, a roof and patio like a colonial house.  The roof had a rainwater collection system and a cistern to hold the water.  There is a small room with a hole in the floor used either as a toilet or a torture chamber.  Sea level forts in the Caribbean were often designed to include a chamber for salt water to rise and drown the prisoner or to torture him by continually soaking him with salt water resulting in sores on his skin.  Because the tide never rose high enough to torture at this fort, the room was most likely used as a toilet.