To the Caribbean and back; the foolish way

Aim of the Trip

After a good 5 days disfrutanding in Granada, a nice sleepy town with traditional colonial architecture (see photos), a plan had formed with some fellow travellers to make a small adventure. The idea was to try and go somewhere a bit different, and make our way out by land and sea to the Corn Islands, a couple of allegedly unspoilt Caribbean Islands of the East coast of Nicaragua (kind of like the Isles of Scilly, but with more coconut palms). You can fly there direct from the capital, Managua, but then where is the fun in that? I teamed up with two Australian's Max and Jen, and an American Ben, who seemed to share the philosophy that the journey is just as important as the destination.

The journey out there was long, and in places annoying, but ultimately rewarding and really interesting. It involved travelling from the capital Managua, in the centre of Nicaragua, by bus out to El Rama, a town in the middle of nowhere, where the road stops. Then you take a panga (speed boat) for two hours to Bluefields, a port town on the East coast. Boats then depart twice weekly on the five hour journey out to the islands.




The Journey out there

The East of Nicaragua, for the most part is unpopulated. Looking at the map, you think, 'surely someone lives there, there's all that space', but nope; there's a few towns along the one road leading through the area, but there's not much else. (Of the total land area in Nicaragua suitable for cultivation, only 27% is currently being exploited). Near Managua its dry and hot, then it gradually gets more humid and forested and wet as you reach El Rama. We had a 7 hour bus ride over night from Managua to El Rama. The idea of travelling overnight is to save time and money (you don't pay for a bed for the night), though after this trip, we all agreed that travelling overnight does in fact suck, as you end up spending an extra day sleeping anyway. So we arrived in El Rama at 3 in the morning in the torrential rain. Huddled under a shelter, tired and wet, it seemed like the perfect time for Max to teach me the rules of chess. And it was here in El Rama that we had our first encounters with the Creole people of the Caribbean coast, who speak a strange brand of English (more on that later).

Our next mode of transport was an outboard motor boat which took us down Rio Escondido for almost two hours.


This part of Nicaragua really is remote. There are no roads of course, the only way to travel is along the rivers, all the land was jungle, the climate was warm and humid with frequent downpours. Occasionally along the banks of the river we would see wooden huts built on stilts, often with their inhabitants wondering outside with a machete.


These people obviously really did live in another world, and I guess were almost completely self sufficient. Finally we arrived in the port of Bluefields; a town I think its safe to say we came to love to hate. Due to our over casual approach to planning our trip, we were shocked and disappointed to learn that no boats were leaving to the Corn Islands for another 3 days, we asked around at the dock, hoping to find a cargo ship or something going, that we could stowaway on, but there was nada. One thing became immediately apparent, and that was that we didn't want to spend 3 days waiting in Bluefields. So we bit the bullet and bought a return flight from Bluefields to the Corn Islands - this is just a short hop of about 25 minutes, but provided us with some great views of both Bluefields and Big Corn Island .



Bluefields

One of the most interesting parts of this trip for me was the different cultures that we came across; it proved a nice change from the Mestizo (mixed race of Hispanics and Indians) people and culture (or lack of culture) that dominates the majority of Latin America. There are three main races of people on the East coast of Nicaragua; Mestizos, Creoles and Miskitos.

The Creoles originate from Jamaican slaves; Bluefields was a British protectorate until 1796, and after this date, many slaves fleeing persecution in the Carribean Islands made their way to Bluefields. As a result, Bluefields and the Corn Islands have a different feel from the rest of Nicaragua. Reggae music is played everywhere, a welcome change from the samey, more traditional Latin music played everywhere else, and the Baptist Church dominates here. It is easy to pick out the Creoles, they have distinctly darker skin and appear more African.

Though Bluefields can only really be described as a dump. In 1988 it was flattened by Hurricane Joan and then hit again by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Some of the locals recounted some of their stories to me from Hurricane Joan; how most people in the town were evacuated before the hurricane hit, and those left sought shelter in the strongest looking buildings. Apparently there was a big aid effort from the west, one guy told me he remembered Hercules planes bringing food and supplies, and they all had to eat porridge. So as result of these hurricanes, Bluefields is a bit of a mess, and didn't really attract us to stay for long.

The Corn Islands

It was the Corn Islands that we were after though. They consist of two Islands; Big Corn and Little Corn. Big Corn has a population of about 8000 people, has a road around the island, a seafood processing plant, some basic hotels and a small town. Tourism hasn't really hit these islands yet in a big way, so there are no hotel complexes or anything. But Big Corn is far from an unspoilt paradise though; the local people seemed really uneducated (most locals we came across were illiterate), rubbish is everywhere on the island, the people just don't care or realise, and mangy stray dogs are abundant. And the food; the food is terrible! Everybody eats seems to eat the same tasteless food for every meal of the day; rice and red beans. If you're lucky the rice has been cooked in coconut milk, and you get a piece of deep fried chicken and shredded salad dumped in vinegar. The frustrating part about this, is that the islands are abundant with tropical fruits, and fruit and vegetables are the cheapest thing you can buy here, but people just don't seem to each them much, as a result they have a really poor (and tasteless) diet. But we sure as hell made up for it. In our week on the Corn Islands we learnt a lot about coconuts; how to open them, how not to open them (Mum, Dad - I want a machete for Christmas), how to cook with them, how to drink rum with them, the type of flesh it will have according to its age, how to make the coconut milk, that coconut water goes off pretty quick, and gone off coconut water is the most vile substance in the whole world. The islands were covered in coconut palms, so we had a constant supply of free coconuts, and nothing amused us more than spending an afternoon hacking open a bunch of coconuts.

Little Corn Island proved to be much more of the 'unspoilt gem' we were after. It was an exciting and rough 30 minute speed boat ride across the Caribbean from Big Corn to Little Corn. The waves were big, and our little boat had 400 horsepower behind it, ensuring some serious air time. Little Corn has a population of 500, no roads, no cars and a small village. There are great sandy beaches and the Caribbean is so warm, too warm in fact; you cannot go in the sea to cool off as the water is just the same temperature (something that's really hard for an English guy to understand). We stayed in a cheap hostel that consisted of a few huts on the beach, and prepared our own food in a basic kitchen. After despairing at our attempts to cook coconut rice, a local Creole guy showed us how to make coconut milk properly, which we then boiled our rice in to make tasty coconut rice.





We had a great few days as beach bums on Little Corn before starting on the long trip back to civilisation. Our plan was to head back to Bluefields to then spend a few days visiting some of the remote communities along the coast. This plan was foiled however by Samana Santa, as everything useful was closed, but also exacerbated by the locals inability to give us useful information to fairly simple questions - the normal rule of asking at least 4 people before trusting any information didn't get us anywhere. So we cut our losses and continued the long trip back to Managua and then Leòn where we are currently lazing by a pool.