This park is named after the 12km-long desert island in the center of Lago Enriquillo, an enormous saltwater lake 40m below sea level. The lake is the remains of an ancient channel that once united the Bahía de Neyba to the south-east (near Barahona) with Port-au-Prince to the west. The accumulation of sediments deposited by the Río Yaque del Sur at the river’s mouth on the Bahía de Neyba, combined with an upward thrust of a continental plate, gradually isolated the lake. Today it is basically a 200-sq-km inland sea.
