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Published: January 24th 2009
"No problem man. The sea is calm man and the boat good. You not get wet man." We had to admit, the sea around Big Corn Island looked glassy and smooth and the boat pointed out to us was huge. What on earth did Lonely Planet mean by it being a bumpy wet ride to Little Corn? We headed off in the direction of the big boat and soon saw the real boat, a small one moored up alongside the big one. Not to worry, the sea looked really calm.
We settled in alongside a German couple, Susan and Bjorn, and waited for the sacks of potatoes, cabbages and bananas to get piled in behind us. As soon as we got a little way off from Big Corn, we suddenly understood what Lonely Planet had been talking about. By the time we arrived on Little Corn thirty minutes later we were soaked, but we had to admit it had been fun, kind of like an oceanic rollercoaster. We were just thankful that Susan had shared her huge plastic rain poncho with us, saving our bags from a soaking!
Even the flight we'd taken to Big Corn had been memorable.
We showed up at the airport in Managua and were given a big plastic boarding pass bearing a number. We were 3 and 4. As we waited, a woman looked out of the window nervously at a tiny plane on the runway. We assured her that it couldn't possibly be our plane as there were too many people waiting to go to Corn. It must instead be the bigger plane parked next to it. A little later, they called people with boarding card numbers 1 to 12 to board. We were led out to, of course, the tiny plane! It held only 12 passengers, the two pilots, and no luggage - that was coming on the next flight! Scott and I decided to make the most of the ride and sit at the very front, right behind the pilots. It was fun but also quite scary as, unlike big planes, you are acutely aware that you are flying through the sky in essentially an over-sized tin can, at the mercy of any storm cloud or puff of wind that happens to come along. At one point we approached a big towering storm cloud but luckily the pilot flew around it,
keeping it just a few feet to our left. For about ten minutes it rained, leaking through the co-pilot's door onto me. I didn't mind getting wet but I was a little concerned about the plane if they couldn't even keep the doors sealed! After an hour and a half we came in to land on Big Corn. It looked absolutely idyllic - a wide strip of white sand, swaying palms, and turquoise water.
After the bouncy boat ride, we arrived at Little Corn like drowned rats. The four of us set off across the island to where all the accommodation was. After checking the three "cheap" places we ended up in neighbouring bungalows at Carlitos. At $17 a night they seemed overpriced as they were just a wooden shack on stilts with shared bathroom, something which would be $2 to $5 in India. Indeed, we'd splashed out on a $17 room in Thailand and had got air-conditioning, hot showers and a roof top swimming pool for that! The next morning when we shopped around more, we decided that we had in fact found the best deal on the island. This was confirmed in my mind when we spoke
to one of our neighbors, long termer Leo, and she pointed out that the neighbouring resort gets crabs inside the rooms whereas ours doesn't as it's on stilts. Phew!
Our expectations for the island had been set way too high. We thought we'd spend two blissfully relaxing weeks marking the end our 17 month trip on a gorgeous tropical island. Indeed, the guidebook wrote it up as a Caribbean coconut-filled paradise with white sand beaches and turquoise reef-filled waters. This was partly true, but what the guidebook forgot to mention was the islands negatives. Most impacting was the wind. It is supposed to be high season but the gale force wind never stopped on our side of the island and we were told by locals that it is pretty much always like this. Day and night it felt as if our little wooden beach hut would be blown right away. The worst thing was that, when it rained, the wind would drive the rain up and over our wall and into our hut, making the bottom foot of the bed wet. By day three we were really tired of the wind, so we decided to try the beach on
the leeward side of the island. Big mistake. I had thought our side of the island was filled with garbage, but the village side was predictably ten times worse. There was no way you could lie out on a beach that dirty.
On our second morning on the island I discovered a new negative. I overheard a girl at the Casa Iguana eco-lodge close to Carlito's saying that she had seen three tarantulas in her room that morning alone, and it was only 10.30am. This was truly the worst case scenario for me! I spent the whole day panicking about it but felt a bit better only after talking to Leo. She assured me that, as our bungalows were right on the sand rather than in the jungle, we were safe. After several days of a tarantula-free bungalow, I believed her and didn't worry quite so much.
However, by that time we had become aware of a new issue. As is the case with most places in Central America, the more time you spend in a place, the more crime stories you hear. Despite being a tiny island with no cars and only one small village, this was
true of Little Corn. We heard several crime stories from tourists, mainly petty thefts. When you notice that there are two machine-gun carrying cops on the island, two regular cops, and high barbed wire fences everywhere in the village, you have to ask why? Sometimes the local non-gun-carrying cop would call into Carlito's restaurant for a beer. He was a friendly looking jovial guy named "Bad to the Bone" who would sometimes exchange his official police shirt for a hawaiian shirt, making him look even friendlier. We'd sometimes chat with him, concentrating hard to understand his thick Caribbean accent. One day I casually said, "Hello, how is everything going on the island, caught any bad guys recently?" To my surprise, he said that they had caught one bad guy that very morning. He had stolen a backpack containing $40 from a tourist snoozing on the beach and had been caught. He claimed he was going to go to jail for two years! When I commented that it seemed rather a long sentence, he said that they were cracking down as tourists used to have their bungalows broken into while they were sleeping and everything stolen at knifepoint - eeek! Fine,
give any petty thieves two years if it helps to discourage crime like that!
Hurricane-like conditions, crime stories, possible tarantulas, garbage, and relatively high prices....by the end of our first week we were beginning to wonder what we were doing. We noticed that some foreigners were describing the place as "paradise" and "unique" because of the absence of cars and extending their trip, while others were of our mind frame and thinking about leaving early. What was the difference? Why were some people so happy, while others so disappointed? In the end, we started to notice a pattern. Those that thought it was paradise had never travelled abroad apart from in Central America. Those that were more critical had travelled elsewhere, but especially to SE Asia. We met one girl who said she had told herself not to compare it to Thailand, but admitted that it was difficult. It is a hard thing to pay more money for somewhere that has worse accommodation, worse food, worse beaches, worse weather, and way more crime. It didn't make sense.
Susan and Bjorn, our friends in the next hut who we had come over with, left. It was really sad as
we lost our best island buddies. But the next day the island suddenly got a whole lot better - we started diving. We had been putting it off, trying to wait for the weather to get good, but when we realized that it wouldn't we decided to just go for it. We were so glad we did. We did a total of 5 dives and all were good. We saw lots of stingrays and nurse sharks, a group of graceful spotted eagle rays swimming in formation, a color-changing octopus, countless lobsters and all sorts of reef fish. The most memorable things we saw was the elusive cobia (my first one ever, it looks like a fish but moves like a shark) and...wait for it...a hammerhead shark! We have been trying to see one of these for ever! To be honest, we didn't get the classical view of it circling overhead with 50 or so of its buddies in tow as in National Geographic, but it was still cool to see one. It was very close, but as it was sideways at eye level, we couldn't really make out the hammers. I thought it was a reef shark until we surfaced
and the dive master told me it was a hammerhead - cool! Diving became addictive, which is why we did five, more than I had expected. The other nice thing was that the dive shop was located on the leeward side of the island and it was so pleasant after a dive to sit on the grass overlooking the ocean and complete log books without the hurricane-force winds. Sometimes we'd forget, being lulled into a sense of calmness, and go back to our side to go to the beach, only to be met with another gale. We'd try to lay out but by 3.30pm we were usually freezing and covered in sand after being sand-blasted constantly so would gingerly go off to shower - not the tropical paradise we'd had in mind! Still, the diving made it fun.
We decided to spend our last few days on Big Corn just to check it out. We had heard bad reports from virtually everyone on crime and seediness but we really wanted to try the famous dive there, Blowing Rock (apt name I'm sure!), and try out the gorgeous beach we saw as we flew in. I ended up getting really
ill the first night so we decided not to dive the next morning. We later found out the dive had been cancelled anyway due to, you guessed it, strong winds. Instead we decided to check out the beach. It was as we remembered from the ariel view - a long arc of gorgeous white sand, nearly deserted. We soon found out why - the wind! Yet again, it was impossible to lie out as our flip flops were just not heavy enough to hold down our sarongs, and even if they did for a few minutes, our towel was covered in a layer of sand instantly. After about 3 minutes we decided it just wasn't worth it and retreated to the shelter of a restaurant for a coke!
We then proceeded to walk around the whole island. Surprisingly, there was less barbed wire on the buildings than in Little Corn. We knew we were almost home when the strong wind picked up to hurricane-force, our hotel being located in the brunt of it. It never ceased to amaze us.
The next day we were planning to dive but it was again cancelled due to the winds. They were
even stronger then ever! The panga boats from little Corn even stopped running as people the day before had almost capsized! WE met the owner of Dolphin Dive on Little Corn. He had come over to do some errands as they had completely closed the dive shop because of the wind. After our failed beach experience the day before, we decided there was really only one thing to do all day - internet! We did a major session, backing up all of the photos in case the camera was stolen(!) and then went out for pizza and beer with some English girls we met. The next morning was time for more internet before getting the afternoon plane back to the mainland.
Despite the strongest winds we have felt, the little 12-seater plane managed remarkably well. I had expected it to be a super scary bumpy ride, but it wasn´t too bad at all. The only scary thing was that our pilot seemed over confident, spending the whole flight drawing diagrams to train his co-pilot. I felt like tapping him on the shoulder (we were right at the front again) and telling him to keep his eyes on the road,
erm, I mean the sky. At one point he sprung into life when an alarm suddenly started beeping. Scared me to death, and the pilots kept straining to see out of the left window. I was staring out myself, hoping not to see the wing hanging off! We never did find out what it was all about. Twenty minutes later, we came in to land. Just seconds before the plane touched down on the runway, the pilot picked up his cell phone and started dialing! I couldn´t believe it! Couldn´t he have waited just 20 more seconds until we were down and slowed to a reasonable pace?!
If you are thinking of going to Corn, I hope I haven't put you off. I like to be bluntly honest in the blogs, though, as I know some people use them for research on a place, and it seems misleading to just mention the good things of a place and politely ignore the negatives, especially when they are so impacting, like the wind was. It seemed that many people loved the wind, saying it kept things cool. Plenty of others hated it, complaining that it ruined the relaxed feel and made
it too cold, especially at night. I guess it depends on your temperature preference.
Now we are back in Granada for a couple of days before Scott flies home and I travel back to San Juan Del Sur to do a week of Spanish classes. It was so nice to go out last night as I could wear my hair down rather than in a bandana for the first time in two weeks, and we could sit comfortaby outside under the stars instead of sheltering inside the dark gloomy restaurant on Corn! I know I have gome on and on about the wind in this blog, but it was so constant and the strength never ceased to amaze us. Hence the title of this blog, and our constant refrain, ¨Gosh, it´s windy today!¨
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Patricia Somewhere
Patricia MC
Hola
Hi Sharon. The tilte of the message goes to Scott, as I understant you are still travelling. I do hope you guys adapt well back here. Big advice: try to turn yourselves off from the news and analysis of the current depression. It would make you feel like going back to India. Actually, I watched a documentary on India yesterday, the good and the bad. Anyways, keep in touch, and let me know when you get a phone number here in the US. I'd love to keep in touch with both of you. Sharon: enjoy your last 2 week, hablando espanol. Tchau Patricia