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.

Nicaragua so far

Another country, another currency, another accent, though the same language thank god. It feels like I'm back to reality here in Nicaragua, well back in Latin America at least.

Apparently its the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, just behind Haiti. And that's easy to believe. But despite being incredibly poor, it definitely has a certain charm to it; the locals travel into town by horse and cart to carry their products to the markets, everyone rides around on bicycles, and particularly here in Granada, the preservation of the colonial buildings gives it that unique ambiance (I never thought I'd use that word) giving you the impression its the 1930`s.

Downtown Granada

Local returning from the market in Rivas

Though people really do struggle to get by here; even those with employment, trying to make something of themselves have a hard time. Speaking to some university students here, they tell me of the fees they have to pay not only for each lecture, but the huge amount just for the certificate at the end of the course to prove they have passed, without which the degree is worthless. These huge amounts of money are really just around 50 USD, which seem like nothing, but that really takes a long time to save that money if you`re working in an unskilled job here (its amazing what you can buy for 3 English pence). Some of the guys working on the streets, just hussling tourists really, told me they cannot get a job because they have no identity papers, and they have no identity papers because you have to pay for them - like you have to pay for identity papers to live in your own country?! And it was an amount that these people just couldn`t afford, though whether that was actually the full story I'm not sure.

The general lack of education amongst the population is really evident. Most kids don`t go to school, and if you visit some of the poorer towns around Granada like Masaya, you can see the really dirty conditions that people live in.

Kids playing in the market in Masaya

So I have had just about a week so far in Nicaragua, mostly around Granada, taking a few more Spanish lessons and making some trips around the area. The next move is to head out to the Corn Islands with some fellow travellers, and then travel up the Carribean coast, where apparently there are some indiginous communities and unexplored territory, its not clear if there is a means to travel up the coast (there are no roads out there), so nothings certain.

Turista Rica

Well I have had a week in Costa Rica now... and wow, what a difference to Venezuela. After spending 2 months in a country where I barely saw a westerner, to this place, where the gringos out number the locals on the buses. My opinion of Costa Rica isn't great unfortunately, which is why I'm heading for Nicaragua this afternoon.

Costa Rica (or Turista Rica as I've started to call it) has sold itself for tourism; for North American tourism. In some of the tourist hot spots its hard to imagine you are in Latin America at all - you can pay everywhere using US dollars (as well as the local currency of course), English is spoken everywhere, and the streets are full of 4 x 4 rental cars, American style fast food restaurants and hotels. A lot of the countryside is now covered in resort style hotels, and you can see countless more being constructed. On the coast, there's one word on everyone's lips; "real estate", as you see billboards advertising plots of land for sale everywhere. I guess this place has become for North Americans, what the Costa del Sol has become for the Brits, a cheap place to have a holiday home with great weather and beaches.

Costa Rica has really embraced tourism, which in a way is great for the economy of the country; they've made their country really accessible to the middle class tourist, who pop down for a week or two, hire a car, stay in nice hotels etc. They've skipped the whole 'backpacker' tourist thing, where everyone's on a budget, staying in cheap hostels and travelling on buses. But I feel this has come at a price. Its hard to see what the 'real' Costa Rica is like, and the locals don't always seem particularly welcome to the ignorant and often rude tourists that seem to come here. Which is another thing, the tourists that you constantly bump in to here, are not what you would call culturally aware, they are here for the cheap holiday in the sun and are really not interested in anything more. The locals seemed fed up and irritated with the tourists, I didn`t get a smile from any of the local people, especially those serving in restaurants etc. I was just another gringo...

And there is also the issue of sex tourism in Costa Rica; prostitution is legal here, which has of course attracted the wrong kind of tourist seeking the wrong kind of thing. When you arrive in the airport in San Josè you are constantly bombarded with billboards in English reminding you that it is illegal to have sex with under 18`s.

But Costa Rica does seem to be a naturally beautiful country, and I'm sure I could enjoy more if I tried and explored a bit more, maybe. Though its not the kind of place I'm looking for at the moment, so I don't want to waste anymore time here.

Roraima Tepui

My main target after leaving Mèrida was to climb the Roraima Tepui, the biggest and most famous table top mountain in Venezuela. Roraima, is of course in the middle of nowhere, the nearest town is situated in the very south east of Venezuela on the border with Brazil. So this is where I headed to try and join an expedition to climb Roraima. My German philosopher friend was heading in the same direction, but luckily I left Puerto Ayacucho before him to avoid being stuck with his stressful rantings for the next week.

Roraima and Kukenùn Tepuis

I managed to arrive in time to join an expedition that was just leaving. An expedition to the top of Roraima goes something like this. Its a 2 hour jeep journey from the nearest town across dirt tracks through Dartmoor like wilderness. You then have two days walking ascending to the base of the wall of Roraima,

a day to climb the wall (which includes climbing up through cloud forest, scrambling up rocks under a waterfall and then clambering up the path of a small river),

We made our way up under that waterfall and up the slope to its left

The cloud forest reached up to the wall of the Tepui

a couple of days exploring the top, and a day or two to descend.



The top of Roraima, which is about 10 square miles, is a very unique place due the altitude (2700 metres), the constant swirling clouds that engulf it at least once a day, and its sheer remoteness and contrast in climate from the surrounding terrain. There are apparently 1000 endemic plant species, and about 4 endemic animal species there (a couple of small frogs and some worms). It really did feel like we were on a different planet.

There were 8 of us who made the trip; 2 Swedish, an Italian, 3 Germans and a Norwegian - a truly European effort. Everyone got on really well, which was good as we spent 6 days together, and it was nice to speak a little English again.

Cornwall, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Germany, Germany, Norway

You can check out all my photos from the trip here.

After Roraima, I think all but two us were decided that some days relaxing on a warm beach were in order, so we all headed to the coast. Which is where I`ve been for the past few days. Now I am preparing (ish) for Costa Rica - I fly Friday. At the moment I plan to stay there for maybe a month, taking some more Spanish lessons and getting to know the country, and then making my way north.

I hope you are all getting on ok back home - it must be almost Spring in the UK right? Its always great to hear anyones news, so any emails are gratefully received, and if you want to plan any summer holidays - how about meeting me in Mexico or Cuba?

Best wishes to everyone.

Trev.

Puerto Ayacucho

Ok, I will try and write some posts on what I`ve been doing in the past couple of weeks; I`m trying not to spend most of my time in internet cafès, which is why I haven`t always kept this thing up to date, and so I apologise if I don`t always get around to replying to anyones emails that promptly.

Puerto Ayacucho

After leaving Mèrida in the Andes in the west of Venezuela, I made my way east across the south of the country. After about 20 hours of bus journeys through the middle of nowhere (this country is really big), I ended up in a town called Puerto Ayacucho, which is kind of situated on the edge of the rainforest. And this place really was in the middle of nowhere, like you can travel for hundreds of miles in this country across flat, featureless terrain and not see a soul or a house, and Puerto Ayacucho seemed to be, well, it actually was at the end of a very long road, which just stopped when no one could be bothered to live any further into the middle of nowhere (kind of like Truro, but with good weather).

20 hours driving through this

It was sooo hot there, I was sweating like.. well, like a Cornishman in the Amazon, and apparently it gets up to 50 degrees in April. I wasn`t planning on staying long there, but I ended up staying for a few days and had an interesting time. There was a company offering tours into the Amazon, although unfortunately there seemed to be only two tourists in town - not enough to make a tour. And in meeting the other tourist, I think I met my opposite. He was an unemployed German philosopher, which is beside the point really, but worth mentioning. Anyway, he had 3 guide books and photocopies of pages of a fourth, and he had a note book where he had planned each part of his trip down to the last detail, including special hand drawn maps of everything. He had a backup plan for each part of the trip in case things didn`t work out, and then, he had backup plan for his backup plan. He couldn`t quite understand how I managed by deciding what I do from day to day.

Anyway, I spent my time there talking with some of the locals, drinking ice cold orange juice, sweating, and visiting some of the sites. One of these included some big rocks (I would call them hills) just outside of town.


There was like a forest park office nearby, where 5 park officers worked. After climbing the rocks I spent the rest of the day hanging out with these guys, talking about politics and Venezuelan women. They had such an easy job; it consisted of either lying or sitting on a bench in the shade whilst chatting and sleeping. Alot of people are poor here, but for most of them, its not as if they work that hard. After we had all had a siesta, we headed into town for what turned out to be a pub crawl. The bars they have here are different to Europe. There is a brand of lager called Polar Beer (which is actually quite a clever name when thinking in English), and there is a type of Polar Beer called Polar light, and alot of the bars in Venezuela, especially in Puerto Ayacucho, ONLY sell bottles of Polar light (which has a taste close to water, but is served so cold it has bits of ice in it), this makes everything rather simple, for the customer and for the bar staff - these bars are just rooms with a couple of big fridges and some picnic tables.

It turned out one of the guys was actually from an indigenous comunity situated about 20 minutes out of town, and he asked me if I was interested to visit his village. Of course I jumped at the chance; I was expecting some jungle tribe with spikes through their noses and ears, and only leaves covering the essentials. Sadly this wasn`t the case; the indiginous community was just an incredibly poor version of the suburbs of Puerto Ayacucho, the people lived in one room concrete houses, wearing old tatered western clothes and had little else. It seemed they had lost a lot of their traditions, although their native language was still strong - most could speak both Spanish and their native language.

What I`ve been up to lately

My time here in Mèrida is coming to an end, I have finished my Spanish classes and need a rest day after a hard weekends trekking, so I have a bit of spare time to write about a few of the things I`ve been up to here in the past weeks.

Telefèrico

Mèrida is home to the worlds highest cable car at about 4900 metres. It`s the obligatory thing for gringos to do here, so of course we did it. An amazing view from the top, and we felt a bit light headed after gaining so much altitude in under 30 minutes. But the Cornish part of me couldn`t help thinking it was cheating a bit - getting a lift to the top I mean.

Mucuchìes

Mucuchìes is a quaint little town that time seems to have ignored (kind of like Indian Queens but with good weather ... and quaint), perched in the almost desert like landscape de Los Andes at somewhere above 3000 metres.

I initially went there as a short day trip just to soak up the atmosphere of one these typical villages. But after talking with some locals, it turns out there are some natural hot springs about 30 minutes jeep ride and 2 hours hiking up the mountains starting just outside of town. Far too good to ignore right? On my quest to get to the start of the trail leading to the springs I ended up making friends with a local guy, Yonathan, he`d just clocked off work on a local farm at midday and was already a bit drunk with a bottle of vodka in his coat pocket. Anyway, he ended up joining me on my adventure, and despite me not being able to understand a word of his accent and dialect we became friends.

The springs were amazing, just a pool of hot water fed by a natural stream poking out of the mountain side with an epic view across the valley. After 2 hours of bathing in the hot water, we returned all the way on foot, to Yonathan`s house/shack balanced on the side of the main curving road running through this part of the Andes. This was just a hut made out of wood and mud with a corrugated iron roof; everything was basic but he had everything he needed to live - very down to earth.

The following weekend I returned to visit Yonathan again. This time I met his cousin and family who lived in the houses near to Yonathan´s. I went on another little trip with Yonathan and his cousin Roger up into the mountains to a lake. In the evening we went to the local basketball court; which like all good basket ball courts, had been turned into a 5 a side football pitch. It seemed like the place where all the kids from the houses scattered on the local mountain side went to hang out on a Saturday night, it had flood lights, and even some changing rooms, some cars had been brought down to pump out the music, and there was a little Sangria flowing. I had a great time chatting with the locals practicing my Spanish, and playing football until the early hours of the morning. Although I have to say the locals weren`t over impressed with the quality of this visiting English football superstar, I was a shadow of my former self, and far from dominated that mid field role. I blame it on the altitude, the poor lighting, and the ball was too small..and...and...

I stayed the night in Rogers hut, it gets surprisingly cold at that altitude at night. But it was a great opportunity to get to know people who are part of the poorer side of Venezuela. They have a very simple life, I guess surviving from week to week on the money they have. It was strikingly obvious how different our lives were, and it was awkward at times as conversations all ways seemed to return to money and the cost of things. And there was no getting around the fact that I had the money to go off on a 6 month holiday on the other side of the world, while they struggled to get by eating basic foods and hitching lifts everywhere.

Zoo

I was ill one day, and had nothing to do, so I went to the local zoo. Which was pretty appalling, with tigers and lions kept in very small cages, with just a concrete floor to play with. The big cats were constantly walking in a small circle, they had obviously gone crazy. And the zoo didn`t even have the decency to put signs on the outside of the cages to tell you what the animals were. Pointless cruelty.

Plaza de Toros

Well you`ve probably seen the photos and video, I`m not a fan of killing a bull like this, but nobody else seemed to have a problem, so when in Rome... After the event I ended up on a night out with some university students, somehow, I can`t quite remember how (oh to be a fresher again). But everyone was really friendly and interested to talk about everything with me, despite my appalling Spanish.

Theatre

I went to the local theatre to see a comedy, and understood very little, but enjoyed the atmosphere a lot.

A bit of a Trek

So this weekend I ended up on a two day trek into the mountains with a friend/guide. I met Rolando on another short day trip into some near by mountains. He was a part time tourist guide, who seemed to do what ever job he could to make ends meet. He was a strong supporter of the government, and his English was better than my Spanish so I thought it could be a great chance to find out the views of these kinds of people, whilst making a trip into the wilderness, and help give some work to a local who clearly needed it.

On the first day we hiked for six hours, constantly up hill of course, with food and equipment to last us for three days. We ended up staying in an abandoned shack (as it turned out Rolando`s tent that we had carried all that damn way wasn`t particularly good if it rained - which he was too embarrassed to tell me about before we set out). That night, and all the following morning it rained. Our shack was water proof thank god. Rolando had also neglected to tell me that he had no water proof jacket or trousers. Bueno.

By mid morning we had run out of water so I went to collect some from the local river, which was now swelling up from all the rain; the water was much darker than the previous evening, I thought due to all of the mud, horse and cow crap covering the surrounding land that had been washed into the river by the rain. I decided not to drink this water, however Rolando was less cautious. Within an hour and a half he had stomach cramps, a headache and diarrhea. So we decided to head back the way we came the previous day. This time thankfully, most of it was down hill as I was having to carry both rucksacks. We made it back to a jeep track at about 8pm, when it was completely dark and we were both dehydrated and Rolando in tears with the pain. By some miracle a jeep was returning to the local town from a nearby mountain lodge. Needless to say when we returned to safety, I pointed out to Rolando how he could improve the quality of his guiding for future customers. But despite all this it was an exciting trip, in some great remote scenery with an interesting person.

Language

Oh yeah, I`ve been studying some Spanish as well. Its going OK although I`m still fairly useless, and I know I have a long way to go. But I`m speaking some form of Spanish all the time here; I don`t know anyone who speaks English, which helps, and I was staying with a local family. I`ve now just about covered all of the 175.4 tenses of this damn language, so the understanding of the grammar is there, but the vocabulary is still fairly weak, and I think the brain needs time to let it all sink in properly. I`m becoming fairly fluid speaking in what they call the `simple tenses`, but I`ve got to work on developing that `subjunctive mind` I think. But if you give a monkey a type writer, and enough time, then he will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. So I`m holding on to this fact, and I will keep at it a little longer before I throw away my typewriter.

Any advice on the best way to progress in learning a language from those of you who speak a second language would be very welcome. I am very interested in learning how to learn a language if you know what I mean, if any of you have any references to articles on the web regarding this topic, that would be great.

I have also been working on another little project recently that maybe some of you can help me with, I`ll let you know about it soon.

I plan to leave Mèrida tomorrow morning, I`m still staying with the family in Mèrida until then. I`m still waiting on certain things to happen to know exactly where I`m heading in the next few days, but I have a rough idea of where I´m heading in the next few weeks .... I`ll leave it as a surprise. In three weeks time I have a flight up to San Josè in Costa Rica, where I will continue my trip up through Central America by land possibly finishing in California to eventually get a flight back to Kingdom United.