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Published: November 1st 2008
My postcard shot
I love this shot.. I just got it coming back from the sunset but it was still warm, there was a warm breeze blowing, a tranquil sound of mellow waves in the background, and just me on a big long stretch of palm tree fringed beach...Tim version:
* Landed in tropical carribean paradise, Little Corn Island, and chilled in a beachside hut for a week.
* Got my PADI diving qualifications, cracked open some coconuts, and got eaten alive by mosquitos.
The version that you should be jealous of, as this place is incredible...:
Little Corn is diving paradise. Be it Scuba Diving or Snorkelling, its awesome. Fishing too but meh, not my interest! Its surrounded by reefs, has a really laid back attitude, no cars or pollution creating machinery except a few generators, and is so carribean it isn´t funny.
We arrived on the panga and were greeted by hotel runners and people from the two dive shops. I´d already talked to both dives shops but let them have a run at me anyway... the girl from the dive shop I wasn´t going with, Dive Little Corn, was cute as so I ended up letting her explain everything about their dive shop and the island to me in detail for quite a little chunk of time! After that, me and the now 3 others went to look for accomodation... the guy from Dolphin Dive, Rohan, who would later dive with
us a fair bit, showed us the hotel but our budget was waaay tighter than that! Me and the other guy instead set off around the island and checked out every other piece of accomodation, a feat that took us a grand total of 1 1/2 hours of wandering through tropical palm trees and beautiful beaches with little sound but that of the ocean and the rustling of wind in the trees, while the girls had a swim... we opted for Graces Place, a place over the other side of the island in a group of 3 cheap hostel hut place style accomodation thingos, dressed up in Jamaican colours. Besides the 3 cheapies, most places are a fair bit more expencive but they´re all really beautiful and well worth it. Very family friendly place to travel. We met a grand total of 6 other people staying on the other side of the island and that sold it to me right off the bat. Time to chill =)
For the next 4 days I did my PADI Open Water qualifications over at Dolphin Dive with Sandra instructing, Rohan taking photos. Carl, another instructor from Sweden, provided comic relief. The other
Deserted beach
No paths lead to this section of the island so its a deserted paradise bloke learning to dive at the same time as me, Andreas from Germany, was an awesome bloke and on some of the arvos during the course and after it, me, him and Rohan and Carl had a few drinks and chatted and stuff so they were good company. A local named Darien also was wicked to talk to and hangs out a lot at Grace´s. There were no single girls on the island until about the second last day when 8 rocked up (many more guys had arrived by then so the odds were still terrible) so it was a very undistracted kinda time aye. The water is beautifully warm, the whole island is incredible to walk around, and the 2 locals that bake the bread make incredible coconut bread and little chocolate bread things! Which is good because food is scarce and rare on the island! Its not unusual for most of a menu to be unavailable, if not all, and the same goes for the bread... "No bread for 2 more days, we´ve got no ingredients!". I got a good bit of reading done, plus some Spanish, but generally just a tonne of walking, swimming, walking a little
further, swimming some more, and just relaxing. Weather wise we had awesome weather the first 4 days but it turned a bit foul for the last 4, and especially the last 2 for our side of the island with pretty constant wind. That killed much of the diving visibility.
Oh yeh, we got to see a baseball game over there too heh. Theyd just started up their own league so we went and had a watch. Its funny - everyone just drops everything when its on! And I mean everything, with no regard for anyone else! At the dive shop we had no power nor any other services when we needed them because all the hotel staff had left without saying anything and were watching the baseball game so no-one turned on the generator so there was no power for the town. Funny stuff. The people of the island in many cases, and its mainly the women, can be reeeally fuckin lazy (yes, its lazy, its not laid ack or relaxed) and by the end of the time this was starting to bug me. The example that I´ve told a few people, that happened to both Sandra and Andreas,
was asking the hotel restaurant for a coffee. Simple right? Its usually just instant anyway! So they have the hot water, the coffee, milk and sugar all in plain sight. You ask for a coffee. Their answer? "Aint got none.". Bullshit! Firstly they have it, second they know you know they have it, and thirdly wtf kinda answer is that, its not even a "sorry we´ve run out"!
I spent a total of 8 days on the island and by the end it was enough for me. While it is paradise, I know I need to live somewhere where there is more to do, like surf etc. and I also need constant reliable power and internet for my kinda work so that limits me a bit geographically for future places to live... yes, everywhere I go I´ve kinda got that in the back of my mind all the time. "Hmm could I live here?...".
Dive wise, its pretty awesome! I still think I saw more in my one dive off Rottnest, but we´re so freakin spoilt in Australia for natural stuff that its shameful heh. Diving, beaches, weather, good animal protection, fishing regulations and law enforcement, protection of
water resources, protection of natural forest... I know we´re nowhere near perfect but fuck we´re good compared to soo much of the world! When I get back home I´m going to have a seriously different perspective of just how good Australia really is, and hopefully that makes me take much more of an interest in it that I have in the past instead of always looking overseas!
Hmm all of that and virtually no stories aye? Thats a bit freakin boring! The entries are getting a bit like that coz I´m entering them so long after I´ve been there that the stories dont come to mind straight away! I swear much more has gone on than is in here, but much of it wont come out until I´m back in Oz with a few beers under my belt... while here I did get to hack open a coconut though heh. And Darien thought it was odd and a bit stupid of me not to have brought a Machete. Its kinda the standard, most important thing you can own here... you wake up in the morning, first check that you have your machete, THEN check that you´ve got your pants
on etc. before leaving the house heh.
Wildlife wise on the island, besides crabs it is pretty void.. you get a few basic birds and lots of crabs at night but thats it. A big part of the reason I think? Dogs and cats. Freakin imported freakin animals! And the locals have no idea! They let them all roam free and breed freely, so of course on an isolated island the local wildlife just gets decimated! Unfortunately you see a lot of trash in the ocean while diving too and the dive shop people and some smarter locals were estimating that they´re going to over hunt the lobster and have none left in under 5 years - no surprise! I tested the possibility of that theory on some locals and it as confirmed...
me: "So, whats the lobster season?"
local: "Season? No season, theres always Lobster, even if sometimes you have to catch little ones"
me: "I heard the catch has been down the last 3 years getting worse?"
local: "Yeh it has... not sure why that is... just means we have to try and catch more"
Now you can partly hate the locals for it because some of
them know why and do nothing about the problem as the profits are big, but others have no education on over fishing nor understand the concept of depletable resources so really stand no chance and its sad to see.
Oh, the other amazing thing... a tropical island, lots of sun, not a heap of power needs, small enough to have a hill with lots of open area that will nearly always be getting wind of some sort, and the whole place being expensive to transport goods to. So how do they power it all? Diesel! Nothing but diesel! A few gringo accomodation owners have natural power generation but the rest, nada! The education is lacking on possibilities, the capital is also hard to find as apparently very very few of them understand the concept of saving (this is coming from gringos living on the island 3 or more years so they have an idea of what they´re talking about), and most just cant be bothered as its easier to just buy gas... such a waste, the place could be running on green energy so easy, with power for much more time of the day (No 24/7 power here, mostly
just after lunch time until maybe midnight or something I heard - our side of the island is all personal generators so usualy only 3 or 4 hours a night per hospice). Anyway, those greeny environment gripes were all partially what added to me having had enough of my time on the island as without the ability to try and do something to improve the situation it is very frustrating... if you lived here and had the chance to help it would be much less the case.
Would I come back? Hell yeh, the place is still wicked! But I think I would want to come back with an enviro aim too... its so sad seeing such a pristine environment getting trashed.
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