Margarita, Mochima & the Caribbean East

This coast was Spain's first foothold on the South American mainland. On his third voyage in 1498 Columbus reached the Paria peninsula, and the pearl beds around Cubagua and Margarita soon drew Spanish settlers; Nueva Cádiz on Cubagua was one of the first European towns in South America, built on pearls harvested by enslaved divers and abandoned in the 1540s. Cumaná, first founded in 1515, is described as the oldest continuously inhabited Spanish-founded city in South America. The salt pans of the Araya peninsula were valuable enough that Spain built a great fortress there in the 17th century to keep out the Dutch.

Margarita resisted Spanish forces fiercely in the independence war, earning its state the name Nueva Esparta, "New Sparta". Antonio José de Sucre, Bolívar's most trusted general and the victor of Ayacucho, was born in Cumaná in 1795.

In the 20th century oil changed the mainland: fields around El Tigre and Maturín and the refineries and petrochemical complex near Barcelona and Puerto La Cruz made Anzoátegui and Monagas oil states, and the vast heavy-oil deposits of the Orinoco Belt lie to their south. Margarita was made a free port in the 1970s and became a shopping and beach destination for Venezuelans. Since the collapse of the 2010s, thousands of people have left from the Sucre coast for Trinidad by boat, and some crossings have ended in fatal shipwrecks.

Orientales, as eastern Venezuelans are called, have their own fast, clipped Spanish and a strong seafaring identity. Margarita's music includes the galerón and the malagueña, sung in improvised verses to cuatro and guitar, and its fishermen and pearl divers are part of island legend. The island's great devotion is to the Virgen del Valle, venerated across the east, whose feast on 8 September draws pilgrims to her basilica.

Carúpano's carnival is one of the most traditional in the country, with costumes, music and parades. Cumaná is proud of its poets, Andrés Eloy Blanco and José Antonio Ramos Sucre among them.

In the Orinoco delta the Warao, one of Venezuela's larger indigenous peoples, live largely by river and forest: their name is often translated as "canoe people", they build stilt houses above the channels, and they use the moriche palm for food, fibre and hammocks. Their language and ways of life remain strong, though the crisis has brought severe hardship to their communities.

Barcelona, Puerto La Cruz and Lechería form one of the country's larger urban areas, and Maturín is the capital of Monagas. Cumaná and Carúpano are the main towns of Sucre, Porlamar and La Asunción are the centres of Margarita, and Tucupita is the only real town of the delta. Los Roques has a small permanent population on Gran Roque.

Oil is the core of Anzoátegui and Monagas, fishing and tourism of the islands and the Sucre coast, and cacao, coconut and fishing of Paria. Margarita's economy, once built on duty-free shopping, now depends more on domestic tourism and remittances.

The crisis has been felt hard: fishing communities lost fuel for their boats, power and water cuts are common, and emigration to Trinidad and beyond has emptied some coastal villages. The rhythm of the coast still follows the sea — fishermen out before dawn, markets in the morning, beaches crowded at weekends and holidays.

The east eats from the sea. Margarita's emblematic dish is the torta de cazón, a bake of young shark and plantain; the pastel de chucho is a layered bake of stingray, ripe plantain and cheese; and the consomé de chipichipi is a broth of tiny clams. Hervido de pescado, a fish soup with cassava, pumpkin and green plantain, and fried fish with tostones are the standard coastal meals, and the Los Roques posadas serve grilled fish and, in season, lobster.

Paria and the Sucre coast grow some of Venezuela's finest cacao, and Carúpano has shipped it abroad since colonial times; small producers make chocolate from their own beans. Coconut is everywhere, in drinks and sweets. In the delta, Warao cooking relies on fish and on starch from the moriche palm. The arepa and pabellón criollo are eaten across the region, and the east shares the national taste for Christmas hallacas.

Los Roques, a national park in Venezuela's Federal Dependencies, is an archipelago of about 350 islands, cays and reefs around a great lagoon. Gran Roque, with its colourful posadas and sandy streets, is the only village, and boats take visitors to cays such as Francisquí and Madrisquí for snorkelling, diving and kitesurfing.

Margarita Island has the colonial capital La Asunción, the fortress of Pampatar, the basilica of the Virgen del Valle and the beaches of Playa El Agua and Parguito on its north-east coast. La Restinga National Park protects a mangrove lagoon, and the dry Macanao peninsula forms the island's wild western half. Coche and Cubagua lie to the south.

On the mainland, Mochima National Park covers dry islands and deep bays between Puerto La Cruz and Cumaná, with boats from the village of Mochima to its beaches. Cumaná has the castle of San Antonio de la Eminencia and its old quarter, and across the gulf the Araya fortress stands above pink salt pans. Further east, the Paria peninsula has the forested Paria National Park, the town of Río Caribe and beaches such as Playa Medina. In Monagas, the Cueva del Guácharo near Caripe shelters a colony of oilbirds, and to the south-east the Orinoco delta spreads into channels and mangroves, visited from lodges near Tucupita.