Ok, well first course of action shall be to get the confession out of the way: My name is Zachary Pavlik, it has been about one month since my last blog post, and I am heartily sorry for this failure in communication! However, hopefully a couple of these pictures will make up for it. The week of the 5th (Sunday) through the 12th (another Sunday) a group of 4 friends and I took a trip to the Corn Islands, a pair of islands off the east coast of Nicaragua in the Caribbean sea. The title really says it all, it was simply paradise! Well, it would be more truthful to say that Little Corn Island was simply paradise. Big Corn Island was simply a horrible, dirty place which I would not like to find myself in again. To be fair, my friends and I had only really been in the main city, by which I mean town, on the big island, so it is quite possible that the further you travel away from it the prettier it gets. Nonetheless, I was completely satisfied remaining on Little Corn for 6 of the 7 nights.
First things first, in order to get to the Corn Islands you either have to take a bus to Managua, followed by another bus and then a boat or two, or you can take a bus to Managua and then fly to Big Corn Island. Loren, the other male in the group and I, were very bent on taking the long route. Being the men we are we believed that it would be much more exciting to take a boat on the high seas, and we welcomed the adventure, it would also be much cheaper. However, not to be. The boat only leaves on Wednesdays, and we were neither willing nor able to miss 2 whole weeks of classes/work for the sake of embracing our masculinity. So we flew. We flew in a remarkably small plane. So small that we didn't even have to suffer through the pre-takeoff safety talk...it was an unspoken and understood that any problems in the air for the most part would mean certain death. We flew in a remarkably small plane.
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| My boarding pass.... |
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| The accommodations for the 1 1/2 hour flight |
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| Leaving Managua |
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| Over the Caribbean |
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| Big Corn Island in sight! |
I will introduce the members of our party...
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| Jenni from San Francisco |
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| Loren from Washington, D.C. |
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| Anne-Sofie from Denmark |
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| ....and Abbie from Denmark |
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| The plane from the outside |
After arriving on Big Corn our first priority was to find an ice cold beer, which we were able to succeed in with the help of a Rasta-looking beer bar. I do mean beer bar, as this place literally only sold beer, and they sold it quite well at 17 córdoba a bottle (the equivalent of about 75 or 80 U.S. cents).
After the refreshment, we caught the 4:30 boat over to Little Corn Island. It was about a 45 minute ride or so and we arrived in the last hour or so of sun. We then checked into our lodging and commenced a foraging for food. It turned out that most everything on the island was quite expensive, expensive being close to U.S. prices for meals and not the Nicaraguan prices that we had been used to. However, I am happy to say that I am basically able to summarize the 6 days that we passed there with words such as: relaxing, reading, writing, beach, swimming, snorkeling, fresh fish, lobster, sun, warmth, comfort, cold drinks, fun. One of the coolest things about the island life was that coconut was a very common ingredient. For instance, the oil that was used to cook was a coconut oil instead of vegetable or olive. There was also a very delicious coconut bread that you could buy in the little town on the island.
Speaking of the island, I realize that I have forgotten to describe it. Little Corn Island is a very small island, but a little bigger than it seems at first. You can easily walk from across it in about 30 minutes, however walking around it (like on the beach) would take a few hours and would be complicated by a couple areas of rocks and small cliffs that you would have to either swim around or walk inland in order to bypass. We were staying on the 'opposite' side of the island from the 'town', it was about 15 minute walk to the town. The town was very small and mainstreet was a sidewalk that went around 1/3 of the island. There were absolutely no motorized vehicles on Little Corn, one of the most beautiful aspects of the island. But enough of all of the words, I will finish this post up with the pictures!
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| Sorry for the size of this image, but the wording is very hard to see and I wanted you all to be able to get an idea of what the island looks like. My friends and I were staying at Grace's Cool Spot, on the east side of the island. |
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| The boat to Little Corn |
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| First sunset on Little Corn |
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| Grace's Cool Spot |
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| Morning on the island |
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| Our home for 6 days |
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| Getting ready for the bonfire |
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| One of the restaurants on our side of the island was owned by a lady named Johanna, she was one of our favorite cooks. One day I caught her grilling a sea turtle, which I think is pretty much illegal, but it tasted SOOO good! Some men had been selling the meat and they gave her the shell (which still had a tiny bit of meat left on it) to do with as she pleased. She allowed me a little morsel and it sure made an impression! |
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| The view from a place called Casa Iguana |
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| Once again on Big Corn the evening before our flight was to leave (the next morning), time to say goodbye to the island life... |
All in all, I think that it is safe to say the little side trip to the Caribbean can be chalked up as a success!
