Sierra Bermeja

Sierra Bermeja is a mountain range in southwestern Puerto Rico. It covers the area from the Laguna Cartegena to the north, to the Caribbean Sea to the south. From the Boqueron Forest to the west, to La Parguera to the east. It consists of a combination of volcanic rocks, completely crossed by serpentinite and amphibolite faults, which could well be the oldest known rock in Puerto Rico. The mountains were used by the Taíno people as refuge from the Spanish, and then by smugglers during the Spanish colonization.

The Sierra Bermeja is thought to be the nesting place of many species that feed in the Laguna Cartegena. These hills are among a few forested areas of the southwestern coastal plain, characterized by its aridity. As a result, the Sierra provides the requirements for a large quantity of wildlife established in the area, many of it endangered.

Developments in the region make this area is seriously threatened, even though it is one of the most important natural areas in Puerto Rico.

Bermeja

Bermeja is an islet lying off the north coast of the Yucatán peninsula according to several maps of the Gulf of Mexico from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Despite being located somewhat precisely in relation to neighboring islands by notable Spanish cartographers of the 16th century, the island was not found in a 1997 survey, nor in an extensive 2009 study conducted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on behalf of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. Interest in the island arose in late 2008, fueled by the fact that if such an island existed, it would be important for determining the boundaries for exploitation rights of oil in Hoyos de Dona (Doughnut Holes) in the Gulf of Mexico.

The island was first mentioned by Alonso de Santa Cruz in El Yucatán e Islas Adyacentes, a list of islands of the region published in Madrid in 1539. Its precise location is given in Espejo de navegantes (Seville, ca. 1540) by Alonso de Chaves, who wrote that from a distance, the small island looks "blondish or reddish" (in Spanish: bermeja). According to Michel Antochiw Kolpa, a French-Mexican cartographer, since 1844 British maps have reported the sinking of the island some sixty fathoms below.