Advertisement
Published: August 18th 2008
So where were we...oh yes, when last we spoke I was busy poking fate in the eye with a red hot poker, rambling on about the virtues of some tough travel for the long term benefits of the memory banks...that which does not kill you only makes you stronger...etc, etc.
So there we were in Granada, a couple of volcanos, rivers and a tad of the carribean away from the Corn Islands, no big deal right? We've crossed the Andes! Crossed the Amazon! Crossed Lima at rush hour already, we're a well oiled machine now, this is kid's play!
So off we went to the bus stop, hopped on the chicken bus for the quick trip down the road to Managua...so far so good, we'll be eating mangos on the beach in no time! Got to Managua, which for the record is a rather bizarre city due to the fact that there's no real city center there because of a few terrible earthquakes a decade or two ago. We hopped in a cab for the cross town trip to the other bus station where we would take a bus to the end of the road...literally.
So there we
Granada
Still find good use for a horse in Nicaragua are at the bus station, next to the pool halls and brothels, six hours early with our tourist faces on, surrounded by folks who see tourists as their personal income streams. After Lee decided there was no way in hell we could go shoot some pool and have a cold beer with the working girls we resigned ourselves to sit and wait it out, shooing beggars away like flies in the outback. I know that's a terrible analogy, the flies in the outback are nowhere near that persistant and they have my apologies!
4 long hours later, and armed with the two other tourists dumb enough to show up more than 45 seconds early for a bus trip from this station/compound/ghetto we decided to sneak outside the 20 foot fences and make our way 50 yards across the lot for a bite to eat...or so we thought anyways. There was a directly proportional relationship between our distance from the station and the number of people approaching us from the shadows (the ones that weren't allowed inside that station anymore). We retreated, they retreated, we feigned a dash they feigned a dash...I felt like somehow the world had inverted and
Granada
One of the nice streets leading out from the Plaza I was stuck inside a perverse game of frogger, trying to navigate my way accross a parking lot and back without the bad guys getting us...it was soon determined we weren't that hungry (I never was very good at frogger anyways).
So there we were tired and hungry waiting for a bus!
Despite us failing to find dinner, we did however manage to announce to the folks beyond the fence that there were four not very brave tourists inside waiting for a bus. This seemed to stir them up into a bit of a frenzy, the scent of dollars and lure of easy money proving too much to resist, four of them decide on an ambling frontal assault. The "just innocently walk on in unnoticed and take their chances from the inside" kind...or so they thought!! About ten metres out, the whistles blow, mechanics scramble out from under the busses, porters drop the bags and run to the gates, the ticket lady grabs her umbrella and joins the defense, gates get rolled closed, my sphincter actually inverts and the standoff ensues. One of them pulls out his knife and starts slurring threats to our guys, but not to
The Oasis
A rare find, a hostel with a pool. Made for a nice refreshing dip worry, our guys have crowbars, the ticket lady looks like she knows how to weild her umbrella and we outnumber them at least 8 to 1. Outnumbered and outwilled, this round of what is obvioulsy a common occurance at this particular bus station is lost by the bad guys and as they slink off back into the shadows we are reminded that there is more to life here than cold beers and nice beaches, life is hard here and passing through and living here are two different things entirely.
So there we were tired, hungry and nervous waiting for the bus!
Eventually, we're on the bus, a lovely pre 1975 school bus apparently a relic of the Chatanooga Dept of Education. Bags on the roof piled twice as high as the bus itself. Luckily three of the locals had the foresight to bring stereos and even luckier still they cranked them all at the same time so for hour after endless hour we were lucky enough to hear three songs at the same time as we bounced towards the coast with the locals singing along to whichever song they knew or prefered regardless of their proximity on the
The Oasis
Catching some ZZZZZ's in the Courtyard bus to the originating stereo...it must be a refined skill. Thankfully, by the grace of God sometime around midnight, the bus was silenced by a movie. Finally we can sit back, relax, watch a movie, maybe get some sleep? Not on this trip!!!! Let me tell you something, after a nervous afternoon, on a chicken bus, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the jungle, on an empty road surrounded by folks who don't speak your language, the very last thing you need to calm the nerves is a horror flick about a pair of tourists on a bus, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods on an empty road surrounded by people who like to dismember and consume them!
So there we were tired, hungry, nervous and terrified riding on a bus!
At 3 a.m we finally got to "el Rama" aka the end of the road. From here the river becomes the road and the next stage of the journey involves taking a Panga boat down the Escondido river to the coastal town of Bluefields. At first light you get assigned a Panga number and soon enough you
Granada
The Main Cathedral in Granada and your bagage and whatever else you could imagine (including one very real kitchen sink) gets jammed into a long slender boat for the two hour trip to Bluefields. Unfortunately they only go once full and the American version of "full" and the el Rama version of "full" differ by a factor of a few hundred percent. I imagine they look at a can of sardines they way I look at a bag of potato chips.
So there we were tired, hungry, nervous, terrifed and cramped waiting for a panga.
After an adrenaline filled two hours of avoiding floating logs and launching off the wakes of other pangas we pulled into the mayhem of Bluefields. A hustling, bustling town on the carribean coast where we would catch the ferry out to the Corn Islands. Now about 22 hours into the journey without sleep or food it was wonderful to find out the ferry would be a few hours late, allowing us to stand in the very hot and humid tropical sun on a rocking dock with a heavy backpack, slowly but surely becoming increasingly nauseous. Nothing like getting sea sick before you even hit the sea.
So
there were were tired, hungry, nervous, terrified, cramped and nauseous waiting for a ferry!
It was at this moment that the PLEASANT portion (everything up until now) of this journey distinctly ended. Ferry shows up and gets loaded with people, livestock, pets, and whatever supplies people out on the Corns need to live their lives. We found a nice spot on the floor up front amongst quite a few other backpackers to enjoy the nice trip across the pleasant carribean sea, all of us wondering why the locals are all cramped in the back of the boat...silly them, maybe the novelty of it all is lost on them. Across the bay we go, nice and easy, smiles all round, maybe we can get some sun and catch a few ZZZZ's for a while, what fun!....hmmm, seems to be getting a little rougher doesn't it...are those storm clouds on the horizon?? out of the nice smooth bay and into angry, nasty awful, heartless carribean sea. Ever been on a boat where EVERYONE, including the old sea dog captain is sea sick? ever been on a boat where every person, piece of baggage or square inch of space is completely and
Da Vinci Pizzeria
The Pizza is definitely getting better with latitude, after some rough beginings we're starting to find a decent pie here and there thouroughly soaked. Ever been on a boat where you've suddenly found GOD and then left him again for deserting you! Five endless hours of absolute and complete misery. Dante knows nothing about hell!
It was at this point the travel gods decided to bring us into port in style with a classical tropical thunderstorm of the exteme variety. Lightning, thunder and rain that felt like you were wrestling a beehive.
Yes, there we were tired, hungry, nervous, terrified, cramped, nauseous and immenintly electrocuted waiting for the joke to end, for solid ground and someplace dry, never again to go rambling on about the worthiness of a tough journey and virtues of future memories. 30 hard hours from A to B....we booked the 50 minute flight for the return leg the next day!
After all was said and done, I'd have to say the Corn Islands were well worth it. We spent a few days on Big Corn (or Great Corn), which is only big relative to Little Corn, its sister island about a 40 minute panga ride away. We shacked up at the beachview hotel for a few days, a nice enough place that seems to have
Granada
The Main Cathedral. had it's hayday sometime around 1940. The island itself, although part of Nicaragua was far less spanish and predominately Afro Carib with that typical Caribean feel to it. The usual array of fruit trees, fishing boats and houses that reflect the nearest hardware store is a five hour ferry trip away. People make do with what they have.
After gathering the courage to get back on a boat we took another high flying panga ride across to Little Corn island where we spent an awesome 5 days or so. What an awesome place. We got a nice little spot on the beach, nothing much more than a glorified hut (maybe glorified is too strong a word) right on the beach. Days were spent walking around the island, swimming out to the reef for some excellent snorkelling, picking mangos or whatever other fruit you find and nights were spent eating good cheap lobster (the main industry) or fish and listening to tunes back at the hut. All in all I'd say Little Corn has been a highlight. Without having the picture perfect beaches you associate with the carribean, it still remains a hidden little gem a little too far away
Granada
me, waiting for a sugar cube or a carrot, possibly even a saddle from everything to ever get too developed or too exploited, a blessing and a curse I suppose.
After our time in the Corns, as mentioned , we took the luxury of flying back to Managua. To be honest it felt like cheating but nevertherless got us there 29 hours quicker and with a lot less grief. Our second time around in Managua couldn't have been more different than the first. Armed with a better knowledge of Managua itself and luckily catching a bus from a much nicer bus stop we were able to venture out and have an awesome night at a local bar restaurant across the street from where we were staying. For 15 bucks we rented a room from a very nice guy just down the road from the bus stop in whats know as the "safe" area of town. He pointed us in the direction of the bar across the street for some eats where we stumbled into an amazing seafood soup I'll not soon forget and spent the night sharing beers and laughs with the locals who seemed delighted to have some tourists in their midsts and regailed us with with laughter and encouraged us
Granada
Another of their awesome cathedrals to join in anytime the bar collectively started singing along with jukebox, a practice they take quite seriously. Managua had certainly redeemed itself.
The Bus trip from Managua to Tegucigalpa, Honduras was fairly straightforward with a border crossing that actually took less than half an hour! We spent a bit of time checking Tegucigalpa out, basically another very busy city where I took my first ride in a cab that had four different sized tires and no front window, which is a bit like sitting in a massage chair with a fan on you, not the worst thing in the world. From Tegucigalpa we hopped on another bus for the cross Honduras trip to La Ceiba, where we would catch another ferry to Utila, one of the Bay Islands, on the carribean coast. The trip was smooth and easy, relative to the last one anyway, and spending the day crossing Honduras was well worth it. I guess what stands out the most would be the guns and the cowboys. They warn you not too get nervous when you see the ingrained gun culture up close but it's definitely there for all to see. It's what I imagine the old
Granada
A local Thai restaurant wild west to looked like, guys riding around on horses with their sidearms making sure the cattle know who's boss.
We spent a good night in La Ceiba getting ready for our trip to Utila. After some confusion about whether or not the ferry was running in the morning, we hightailed it in a cab to catch the 9:30am, just to realize we didn't have enough cash for the ride. Luckily, a woman named Matilda lent us about 100 Lempira, which we would pay back to her sister Marina, who owns the laundromat on Utila (and we were in desperate need of a wash and fold). We checked into the backpackers lodge, part of the Ecomarine Dive Shop on Utila, where I started my scuba diving certification course that afternoon.
Hi, Lisa here...unfortunately, my grandmother passed away while we were just a couple days into Utila. We took the first flight we could get back to New York from San Pedro Sula, which is supposed to be a pretty easy ferry, taxi, and bus ride about 5 hours away. Of course, we encountered some roadblocks, literally--there was a transportation strike so we had to walk over bridges
Granada
Time to lose the hair. Too hot and much too humid where they were picketing and catch taxis on the other side to get to the airport. But we made it home in a little bit less than 24 hours.
Although the circumstances were very sad, we were glad to have the opportunity to spend time with family, who we missed very much. Grandma was such an integral part of the family, and we spent a lot of time recalling all of the things that made her the unique woman that she was. I believe many stories will continue to be told, and she'll keep us laughing for decades to come. She will be immensely missed.
Now, back to Utila.
Until then...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.213s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 14; qc: 71; dbt: 0.1029s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Mike Frenda
non-member comment
wsup
Please try not to get killed. Baby Ethan arrived 8/27 (7lbs 4oz 20in) and would like to someday meet his Uncle Andy and Aunt Lisa. Have fun, stay safe.