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After a long, bumpy bus ride I arrived in Rama from where I planned to take a boat to Bluefields on the Caribbean coast. Unfortunately I arrived too late to catch the last boat so I had to stay the night. I picked a hotel close to the dock and the first sight I saw after check in was a prostitute doing her make up in the communal area. I asked the landlady whether it was safe to walk around the town and she shook her head and said not after dark and mimed her throat being slit and then being shot.... hmm maybe I'll just get some dinner and stay in the hotel tonight. Needless to say it's not the most salubrious town. I took the first boat to Bluefields at 5am and arrived after a two hour scenic speed boat ride through rainforest.
Bluefields is a dirty, chaotic, colourful and multicultural port town and the jumping off point for the wild, untamed Autonomous Atlantic Region of Nicaragua. It's a mix of Mestizos, Afro-Caribbean, and Indigenous cultures living to the soundtrack of Reggae and Soca. It has a vibrant but seedy bar scene and friendly but edgy locals. One
friendly guy came up to me and tried to sell me drugs and when I said no asked me just to give him money. He said he's not like the other guys around here - he would rather ask me for money instead of outright robbing me. But I still didn't give him any money and he went away.
The town was founded by a Dutch pirate called Abraham Blauvelt, who hid in the bay's waters in the early 17th century, and was a rendez-vous for English and Dutch pirates for the next couple of centuries. Nowadays it is a rendez-vous for Columbian cocaine smugglers, who have funded much of the infrastructure of the town after many years of neglect by the Nicaraguan government. It is also the breeding ground of the "White Lobster" - bricks of cocaine ditched by passing smugglers, during altercations with the coast guard and US anti-drug enforcement, which wash up on the beaches. Strangely, I was advised not to pick it up if I come across any - I wonder why? ha ha.
Ok, so the above probably makes it sound like a terrible place but it's actually a really interesting and fun
place, and with a totally different culture to the rest of the country. I timed my arrival to coincide with the final day of the Palo de Mayo festival. This is the European maypole festival as you've never seen it before with a Afro-Caribbean twist. Rather than just one day, it lasts for the whole of May.
I was looking around town in the morning and I met a local guy, Carlos, on the street who told me he works in conservation on Little Corn Island but was here for the carnival. He was meeting three American friends and they were going to have a traditional celebratory lunch of seafood in coconut milk before participating in the carnival. He invited me to join them so I did. I'm always a little suspicious of over friendly people in the street but there was no harm in checking it out a little further. He asked me and the three Americans for $6 each towards food, I went with him to the market to buy some shrimp, and then we all went to his friends house.
He cooked us up a very tasty lunch of shrimp and coconut rice and we
drank some beers. However, it became apparent that the lunch had cost much less than what he had charged us and he kept trying to ask us for more money for beer than we actually drank. He was making a profit on it. I questioned this and he said the remaining money we paid was for "rent of the kitchen". It also turned out that he had also only just met the Americans but made it sound like he had known them for a while. Nevertheless we had a very nice lunch and a lot of fun with his group of friends and was able to check out a local's house.
We headed back in to the town to join the carnival and stopped in a bar along the way. Carlos said the procession would pass by shortly so it was a good place to wait. We ordered some drinks but it was clear that us foreigners were expected to pick up the tab and so we told him that we had contributed enough and we weren't going to pay for everything. We stayed there for about an hour but the procession didn't pass. We asked some other locals
and it would be early evening before the procession passes. I think the intention was for us to pay for their drinks all afternoon. We made our excuses and said we would return later in the day to join the procession then. Carlos said he would meet us later at the same place.
Up to this point Carlos had been suggesting that he take me to the Peal Islands in his father's boat the next day. We would split the petrol cost at around $20 each. A very good deal compared to the normal cost of over $100 to visit the islands. The catch was that he said he needed to buy the petrol in advance and that I had to give him the money now. I was actually interested in going but, despite the fact he was very convincing, I didn't trust him so of course I said no. Realistically if he hadn't just done a runner and we had actually gone it would have cost more in petrol than that, and I probably would have had to fork out more money later.
I didn't see him again that evening. Several days later I met another group
of foreigners who did the same thing with him in the evening. I met up with Ariana's (my friend from Esteli) sister who lives there and she took me round some bars and then we joined the carnival with some of her friends. The procession was an interesting mix of the English maypole dancing with an Afro/Latino flavour. A man carrying a tree gyrated down the street while everyone makes an arch in pairs. Then those at the end go under the arch and rejoin at the front - very typical of traditional dancing from the UK. Of course, this was done to tribal African drumming, like the Punta but I can't remember the proper name, with a lot of gyrating and shouting. The process climaxed in a crowded street party with loud soca and a lot of pushing and shoving. We danced and partied in the streets until the early hours. One of the good things about the festival was that the streets were full of people and there were police everywhere - much safer to walk the streets at night.
I got up early the next morning to take a speed boat to Peal Lagoon and saw
Carlos again who was still trying to get me to give him "petrol" money. Now he was more desperately trying to get me to help him out with $5 instead of the full $20. But then he finally got the message and left and I took the speed boat to Peal Lagoon.
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Tina
non-member comment
about Nicaragua
It took a loooong time to get the message tho you finally got it. Glad about it ;-)