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Published: November 1st 2008
Tim version:
* Took buses and boats from Leon to Managua, to Rama, then past bluefields to the Corn Islands.
The version with a little more detail:
Leaving Leon I was leaving after having slept for maybe 40 minutes. I was waiting all morning for the sun to come up so it was safer at the bus station and that ended up being about 6am due to a whole lot of clouds blocking it out for a while! Too bad it was raining =( A quick taxi and I´m in the bus for Managua. No other way but through Managua again! My eventual destination is the Corn Islands, which you can fly to from Managua, but would I do that? Nahhh too boring! You miss everything along the way! However, for those pushed for time, its a perfectly legit option.
Sooo the bus is "direct and express" to managua but we still pick up people all along the way so who knows what the hell is so direct and express about it! I guess it means the driver doesn´t go home for lunch in the middle of the bus run, and he makes sure he is at
least 10km an hour over the speed limit at all times. As long as it gets me there fairly fast then I dont care! And it did that without issue soo I cant complain =)
Managua and I´m starving and taxi drivers are hassling the shit outta me since I´m the only gringo at the bus station that early in the morning it seems! I managed to shake them by grabbing some food and got talking to a local driver eating there too who told me the easiest way to get to Rama, reconfirming what I was doing. Unfortunately he also reconfirmed how far away the bus station I needed was. Doh! So post Pollo Asado and some agua later Im back in another taxi whizzing to the other side of Managua! Managua is starting to wake up and the air is a lovely colour of exhaust fumes and dirt. The driver I find out is an ex limousine driver! As to why he is now driving taxis I didn´t know how to ask but from the sound of it his previous gig was really good, driving the rich around Granada, and to change to taxi driving in Managua...
Rooster in a bag
What easier way to transport a rooster than just put in a bag hey? Heh it was cruel but funny seeing it try to hop around though.ouch! An awesome bloke though, he was very patient and taught me a little more Spanish along the way and we traded basic stories and facts about Aus and Nica and in no time I was waving goodbye to him and some Cordobas (Nica currency) and getting pushed onto a microvan, again "express and direct", for Rama! The microbuses, if you come to Nicaragua, can be an excellent way to travel! Many are run by the Universities it seems so the money is going to a good place. Not only that but your bag is guaranteed to be inside where you can see it and with only 12 people or so in the van its a secure and easy way to travel so you can let your guard down a bit - a bit relief from walking the streets of Managua! Our driver of course lied to me about the price by 50% but my taxi driver said he´d do that and I knew what the real price would be anyway so no issues =) I still resisted him a bit to try and give him the shits, making my Spanish out to be worse than it was, but then
Irony
Look below the sign. handed over the $$$. From what I gather he had lied about the express part too which gave a few other Nica passengers the shits! But when you´re already whizzing down the freeway towards your destination there is very little you can do heh and he knew it!
The journey takes most of the day, for us taking from 8am or so until 5pm. What you see along the way is incredible, passing past the middle of the two lakes, through country low lying regions, then up through some mountain ranges past incredible rock formations and more scenery than you could poke a stick at, right into cowboy country, eventually landing in a seedy port town. Two scenes that will stick in my mind for a long time to come made the journey even more special...
The first was on the first leg, in the microvan on the way to Juigalpa. At one stage when we were speeding towards the mountain ranges, still on the flats, we passed by a road crew cutting the grass on the side of the freeway. Now the normal scene at home is a guy on a tractor with a large crass cutting
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They pretty much just paint who they want you to vote for over everything! Bus stops, power poles, business walls, footpaths, you name it! apparatus on the back, or maybe one of the other large types of ride on lawn mowers. Instead, this is Nicaragua, and of course it is done with a Machete! I had much sympathy for the workers as it would have been such backbreaking work and while I found it funny it was more funny in a way that its sad that the infrastructure and council machinery isn´t there to help them out. It Involved around 15 or so blokes with large machetes crouching over the grass slashing away in big sweeping blows, slowly hacking away at the grass. The area they took up would have taken a tractor less than a minute to do, but my guess is it´d take these 15 guys a good 10 minutes to do the same area! Also driving along you saw just how much more work they had to do, and my heart sank a little and I felt a twinge of shame for just how easy things are back in Aus through no direct help mine and just because I was lucky enough to be born there.
The second incident was just downright funny! At Juigalpa you change to a large
bus, back to more regular transport. There was a movie on for a lot of the ride with a Central American named ¨Maestro¨. The gist of the movie was about this guy Maestro the mechanic being a real ladies man, living in a town where all these beautiful white american girls would rock up and he would swoon and spend the night with each one! There was a white guy too, but of course Maestro always beat him to the girl and the white guy turned out to be a nasty villian. It was funny as to see everything working in reverse. The only white girl to go for the white guy over Maestro of course ended up being cheated on and stolen from by the evil white guy, and after an incident when Maestro was on his deathbed she came running back to Maestro regretting her run with the white dude! Anyway, thats not even the thing I meant to talk about... it was that our driver, mid-run on the way to Rama, stopped the bus at a food stop in the middle of nowhere. A few of us seemed to think ahhh shit the bus has broken down,
The REAL river shot
The real view of the river! This trash is everywhere, this is the norm rather than the exception. Puts a rather big spoiler on a lot of Nicaragua. but that didn´t turn out to be the case.. No, in true latino male style, he had stopped to chat up a chic heh. A whole bus full of passengers and he stops the service to chat up a girl! And it wasn´t a quick run either, he was trying for at least a good 10 to 15 minutes while we all had to wait! We could see him from the bus, trying lines, trying to get his arm around her and getting rejected, making jokes that she wasn´t laughing at, and just being really persistent! At the end of the 15 mins he still hadn´t got anywhere but laughing another one of the guys working the bus went and told him that we´ve really gotta go and begrudgingly we left but not before he managed to plant an unwanted kiss on the girl, narrowly avoiding a slap!
Rama is more of a farmer, cowboy and fisherman shopping spot and is pretty basic and dirty really but I felt surprisingly comfortable there heh. It and Bluefields get described as places where most hotels and hostels rent rooms by the hour that may or may not come with a girl
Beautiful river shot
The style of shot thats awesome to take, and what I´ve been doing most of the time. This time however I felt like showing the real uncut scene too. Checkout "The REAL river shot" to compare already inside them. I killed 2 days there, stocking up on some equipment like a knife, bowl, pot to cook with etc. for the Corn Islands and it was a relaxing slow couple of days! My next part of the run was on the boat The Captain D, a 135' former USCG Buoy Tender with sleeping bunks, and it left at 5am so a dark taxi run got me there and I settled in for the journey, being the only gringo on board.
The ships staff were from the Corn Islands to spoke English and Spanish, as well as their own creole version of English, so it made for an interesting journey hearing all the different lingos around the ship. To quote Wikipedia, "A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin." - so its a modified English. Much of the time if you didn´t know their version was based on English then you wouldn´t understand a word they say as their accent is so strong! Think Jamaican, as they are Garifuna so they´re black mixed sometimes with some Nicaraguan. Check out an article on The Corn Islands to understand
The street outside my hostel
Of course I was staying at the RITZ - thats my limousine outside. more as its interesting... I slept for a lot of the journey but the view down the river is really really beautiful and tranquil, the Captain D going at a good but slow pace, perfect for viewing. When we stopped at El Bluff, opposite Bluefields, we picked up a bunch more people, then trekked on to The Corn Islands over the open ocean. Check out the photo of the boat graveyard! Something you notice again probably due to the inability to remove dead old machinery and boats is that if a boat gets too old, or sinks, then it is just left where it is! In many of the ports including El Bluff and Rama you can see in the rive rbig pieces of metal sticking up out of the murky water, the tops of rusty metal ships that have sunk with their carcasses just left where they died. Freakin serious water hazards so you´d want to know where the clear lanes are or running over one could carve your boat in half!
The ocean stayed totally calm for us and the trip over was dead easy and pleasant. Another backpacker, from Aus it turned out, was also now
on the boat. When we reached Big Corn Island it was too late to get a boat to Little Corn so we bunked down in a place for the night not too far from the dock. Cocaine smuggling runs through these areas and so shady characters are about and the streets dont feel all too safe once its late at night. The place however I must still say is beautiful, and during the day its really nice. Beautiful golden sandy beaches, palm trees galore, and some good diving spots can be found with ease, but it was still too commercial for me so the next morning we caught the first panga, a fast dual engine boat, over to Little Corn. As for what was there, tune in next time, coz this entry is fat enough as it is! This won´t of been an interesting entry I reckon and is more of a if-i-lose-my-diary backup, but the few photos should still be purrrdy to look at for yas.
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