Colombia's Former Prison Island Gorgona Is Open For Tourists — And Snakes

"Guides hand out knee-high rubber boots before leading visitors on hikes around Gorgona National Park, an island 21 miles off Colombia's Pacific coast. The boots provide traction in the mud — and protection from poisonous snakes."

"The presence of scary reptiles is just one reason why the park remains largely unexplored by outsiders. It doesn't help that it is better known for its days as a kind of Colombian Devil's Island, when it housed a penal colony for 1,200 hardened criminals, from the 1960s-80s. Also, when tourism started to take off in Colombia a few years ago, Marxist guerrillas raided the island."

"'Tourism on Gorgona has always been a challenge,' Julia Miranda, director of Colombia's national park system, told NPR."

"But for adventure-seekers there's a lot to love about Gorgona. Fishing is prohibited so there are plenty of sharks, rays and other marine life to enthrall scuba divers. It's a prime spot for whale watching. And the island is full of monkeys, lizards and birds, some of them endemic."

"'It's like a mini-Galápagos,' says Jorge Ramírez, manager of Gorgona's only resort, referring to the Pacific islands off Ecuador where Charles Darwin devised his theory of evolution."