Mocha Island
Before being discovered by the spanish in the fifteenth century, the island was already inhabited by the Lafkenches, a Mapuche tribe who named the island as Amuchura which means "the resurrection of the souls".
This is because the original peoples of the island, from their own worldview, believed that the souls of the dead were traveling from the continent to Amuchura as a step into eternity.
The first sorties by the first sailors to the island dating from 1544 with the visit of Juan Bautista Pastene, followed by english pirates and dutchmen, prominent among them Sir Francis Drake, who reportedly received an deep scar on his face, obtained in Isla Mocha during a fight with the natives in 1578.
Another famous pirate was dutchman Oliver Van Noort, who with Francis Drake were known for their misdeeds and using the island as a place of supply.
Having assisted the pirates and refuse to be conquered by the Spanish Crown, the Lafkenches were expelled by the Spanish in 1895, transferring all its inhabitants to the mainland, leaving deserted and uninhabited Isla Mocha.
After remaining without human presence for over 160 years, from 1833 began to be repopulated, a reason why can we explain the quality of virgin rain forest, rich in wildlife and native fauna.
On Isla Mocha the dangerous spread of requirements and costs low resulted in over 100 shipwrecks, leaving the imagination open to countless stories about pirates and hidden treasures.
One of those treasures was told by the U.S. writer Herman Melville who creates the famous novel about the whale Moby Dick, in 1851, based on the story of an American sailor and his experience on a giant white whale, Mocha Dick, who lived in the shores of this legendary island.
