4.4.10

semana santa


a.k.a. vacation. Karen, Rachel and I made our plans to venture to the Carribean side of Nicaragua for Semana Santa because we figured we wouldn’t have the time to make the trek at any other point during our internship. Our ultimate destination was the Corn Islands and while there are multiple daily flights between there and Managua we decided to take the super cheap but significantly longer way which also allowed us to see more than just the islands. Our trip began at 9pm from the bus depot where we took a 6 hour ride to El Rama. At 3am we arrived only to have to wait until 6am for the daylight and for the panga (boat) ride down the river to Bluefields. We all fell asleep sitting up watching some dubbed Penelope Cruz roco. Around 5:30ish we ventured over to the docks to make our ride. It was unreal the amount of people waiting. We were some of the last to board, which didn’t seem to be a problem at first. After 2 hours of riding we then arrived in Bluefields only to be told that the panga headed for Pearl Lagoon, our first destination, had left 15 minutes prior. The dock manager said that he could get us on a panga to Kukra Hill and then we could take the bus from there. So we did that ride for another hour. Once we arrived in Kukra Hill we allowed other pushy passengers to take the first 3 waiting taxis. Mistake. The bus to take us to Pearl Lagoon left 15 minutes early (which is totally absurd for this country) and we soon discovered that it was the only bus that day. We sucked it up and got had on an over-priced cab ride, which we tried to barter down but he wasn’t having it (one guy literally drove off).
We reached our hospedaje around 1pm utterly exhausted (15 hours not including the bus ride from home to the bus station) but ready for some sun and food. First we had beers at the hostel were the waitress gave me chicklets for change (throughout the trip this continued to happen, it’s a Caribe thing). We ate lunch at the Queen Lobster under a palapa which had literally been constructed finished that morning (while eating two gentlemen were working on a second). We started chatting with them and they offered us a cheap panga ride to a beach up the way. There we met a very interesting man who spoke English, Spanish, Miskito, Garifuna and Sumo and fought in the revolution for Somoza’s army when he was only 14. Even though Spanish is supposed to be the primary language, everyone on the Caribe speaks creole or Jamican sounding English. Its near impossible to understand at times. Everyone listens/plays to reggae and by the end of the trip we were singing to all of the hits.
In the morning we set out for Orinoco, home to the highest concentration of Garifuna’s in Nicaragua. It is a rich culture and we were excited to go there. However we waited eating Coco Bread and drinking presto coffee then watched as the panga from Bluefields enroute to Orinoco did not stop to pick us up. A guy approached to offer us a ride with him since he was also expecting the panga to stop. So we spent the next two hours on the Puerto de Laguna de Pearla drinking rum and California, a juice drink of pineapple and coconut. Finally arriving around 1pm we spent the day walking around the small town which had no cars but allows their cattle and horses to roam freely. We met some locals who showed us around a bit and played some music for us. The took us to a house of a woman who makes the traditional Garifuna bread made of cassava then later took us to another person who makes moonshine and sold it to us in a used pepsi bottle. We sat outside our hotel with the boys laughing and drinking and listening to the music from the bar until the electricity shut off at midnight (they don’t have power from midnight to noon every day).
The next morning we woke around 6am for our panga at 7am to take us back to Bluefields to catch the ferry to Corn Islands. We arrived around 8:15 to find out that the ferry doesn’t run on Tuesdays and that we must spend the day and night in Bluefields. We too quickly found a hostel called the Lobster Hut (recommended by Lonely Planet but not by us) and set our stuff down. It wasn’t until after we paid that we realized how gross the place was. No running water, backed up toilets, a sink that drained onto your feet and a very creepy owner. It felt like we were in hotel of “the shining” at times. We made sure to spend the day out in Bluefields so we hung at the park, ate some very fresh Pico bread, bought liquor and snacks for the island, played on the internet and finally went to the casino to use what we found to be the only place in the city to have tolerable bathrooms and running water. Since we were in there we figured we might as well play some slots. Finally its time for bed and my room smells like an ashtray and we are next door to a club that plays music until 3am.
8am Wednesday morning. Out of creep hotel, packed, tickets in hand, ready for a leisurely four hour ferry ride to paradise. The boat was packed and somehow we managed to get seats in the air-conditioned room. The first 2 hours we watched “wrong turn” dubbed in Spanish then stopped just inside of the lagoon to get gas or papers signed, we are sure what. Then we hit the high seas. Karen and Rachel left to sit outside because the AC kept going in out. They were drenched within minutes but it was still kind of fun. Then an hour later the sickness started kicking in. I put my head down and took a nap only to awake an hour later thinking we were almost there. Then I talked to the woman next to me who explained that its 4 hours on the high sea making the whole trip 6 hours. Within the next hour I notice a worker (who I named the bolsa-hombre) whose job it was to pass out little black plastic bags for people to yak in and take the full ones to the trash. The boat was being tossed around and when I looked outside I kept expecting to watch someone go overboard. It was hell. Getting to hear Karen and Rachel’s account of outside was marginally worse because people were just yaking on the floor and they had their feet in vomit just about the whole time. Four pm we arrive in Big Corn and must wait for another panga to take us to Little Corn where our hotel is. We immediately started making plans for our return trip to be on a plane because there was no way any one of us was getting back on the vomit boat. I still find it hard to believe.
Little Corn was amazing. The water was beautiful, the sun was bright and we had a great time. It made it worth the torment we went through to get there. It a small island and you can walk the perimeter in about 2 hours. We stayed on the east side but the town and dock is on the west. Our eco-hotel is owned by two former Fort Collins, CO residents who fell in love with the place. We drank Caesar’s, which is a Canadian Bloody Mary that made Karen (a Canadian) very happy and spent lots of time in the sun. On a walk to the north of the island we were able to see a baseball field funded by a “cocaine philanthropist”, this is an individual who finds a bag of cocaine washed ashore, sells it and uses the money for community improvements. We later found out that the paved sidewalks and the dock were also funded by cocaine philanthropists. We stayed until Sunday morning when we took our final panga ride back to Big Corn to catch a 70 minute flight back to Managua.

2 comments:

  1. Phoebe Ackley16/4/10 13:32

    Kara Mia! Que maravillloso aventura! Thanks for writing this, I'm glad to hear what's going on, and to revisit some of the local color of journeying through Central America. Buen Viaje! I look forward to more. Take care.
    Peace, Phoebe

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  2. Jeffrey Luggen21/4/10 13:39

    You should proof read these posts a little better before posting. They contain lots of typos, bad puctuation and improper grammar.

    ReplyDelete