Taking a bus from a terminal in Managua is not an experience where you take lightly.
The city breathes an atmosphere of latent hostility.
The grids containing stores, housing and security guards armed with shotguns are intimidating.
Our passage through the capital was thus confirmed in a hurry as we had foreseen. There followed a journey as uncomfortable as it was enigmatic through the interior of the country, along muddy dirt roads, rivers hidden by jungle and fog.
We arrive at Bluefields, already on the Atlantic coast, at the end of the day.
With time to feel, in the streets and in one or another bar, its Caribbean garifuna and reggae pulse, heavy and arrhythmic due to cocaine traffic "white lobster” that gripped the village a long time ago.
A resident of Bluefields – on the Nicaraguan coast – watches a boat pull away towards the Corn Islands.
Sunday and Morning Arrival at Big Corn Island
Early the next morning, we flew 60 km over the Caribbean Sea and the two Corn Islands, before landing on the biggest, Big Corn.
We settled in Casa Blanca, a small guest houses family operating in a green and yellow wooden house, aged, worn like almost all around.
With no time to waste, we cool off in the crystal-clear sea on the beach in front. Then, we set out to discover, in two old rented pastries.
Visitors to Little Corn Island explore the deep coral sea off the island.
The trails run past closely spaced clusters of spartan dwellings that tropical storms and cyclones often toss around.
As did Joan in 1988, which cut down most of the coconut trees and the island's vital copra production, leaving it dependent on fishing and negligible tourism.
It's Sunday. We come across picturesque families in full costume on their way to their favorite churches. As in other parts of Nicaragua and the Caribbean, religion supports community. at the same time, it divides it among the various branches that have been installed.
From the crowd that heads to her temple, the Adventist woman seems to have won over most of the faithful. Even less frequented, the Anglicans and the Baptists, do their best in their ceremonies, here and there, performed in the style of a musical gospel.
The natives who did not adhere to any of the faiths, stayed in the houses and small adjacent gardens.
Let yourself be lulled by the Caribbean rhythms that arrive in short wave from the other side of the sea.
Big Corn Island natives dive from the top of a stranded boat off Brig Bay.
Meanwhile, they check out the long cooking of yet another lunch of rice and beans, perhaps enriched with some fried fish.
The History and Ethnic Adventure of the Corn Islands/Islas del Maiz
The population of almost seven thousand inhabitants of the Corn Islands / Islas del Maiz was predominantly Creole. Formed by a mixture of indigenous blood with African slaves brought from other parts of the Caribbean, such as Jamaica.
The British colonized the Corn Islands until 1894.
In recent times, the ethnic landscape of the Corn Islands has become more complex.
The islands attracted Hispanic Nicaraguans from the mainland and Miskitos (from Costa dos Mosquitos), both responsible for Castilian being about to overtake English Creole as the most spoken language.
The Miskitos proved themselves to be an unlikely genetic combination.
Several historians attest that it was generated by the maritime indifference of a Portuguese.
A Big Corn native trains baseball on the turf of the island's main stadium. Baseball is the main sport in Nicaragua.
The Revolt on the Ship of Lourenço Gramalxo that Africanized the Costa dos Mosquitos
Lourenço Gramalxo he was a captain of a slave boat that transported slaves from Samba Island, off the SenegalWith the Brazil as a likely destination.
During the transatlantic journey, the slaves seized your ship.
Without any navigation knowledge, they didn't prevent it from sinking in the Cayos Miskitos area. In a first phase, they were imprisoned.
Later adopted by the Tawira people who accepted unions of Africans with women of their tribe and their children as free members.
We appreciate the intrusion of Hispanics and Natives Miskitos in the Corn Islands at the bars on Main Street and the Picnic Center beach.
There, the reggae and the Calypso and national beers, Toña and Vitória liven up the atmosphere and lead to the easy conversations of Latin Americans.
Couple walks past a log construction on Little Corn's idyllic coastline.
Gifted by the weather calm, the days succeed one another, glorious, under an always blue sky, caressed by a breeze that softens the tropical heat.
A few clouds venture into the sunset.
The rain that irrigates the island's tropical vegetation only falls at night, in fulminating squalls that cleanse the impending morning atmosphere.
Coconut palm highlighted above the Caribbean Sea.
Sailing Time from Big Corn to Little Corn Island
After three days of Big Corn Island, we moved from speedboat to the miniature sister, Little Corn Island. The Pequeña Isla del Maíz, as mainland Nicaraguans prefer to treat it.
We quickly understand that it's much more than size that distinguishes Big from Little Corn. The first houses the archipelago's cultural soul and headquarters.
Little, on the other hand, remains on the fringe of events, in a tropical retreat that only its XNUMX inhabitants and a few dozen visitors a day, in high season, are privileged to enjoy.
Shortly after settling in, we took the trail that skirts the island. We discovered the variants of its coast, slightly urbanized on the west coast, protected from the wind and surf.
The bay that is home to the only village on Little Corn Island.
Almost divinely wild on the opposite side, where the sea is broken by an extension of the second largest barrier of coral of the world. There, it assumes a strange streaked pattern of blues and greens that extends to the white sand and almost touches the line of coconut trees that shade it.
Along this trail and others that branch from it, we come across natives. We greet them with a conventional “Hi” or “Hello”. But, whatever we say, the greeting we get from them is always “OK”.
After some time without understanding the logic, we confirmed with one of the passers-by the explanation for the phenomenon that we had arrived at in the meantime.
The island is so small and has so few trails that its 600 inhabitants end up crossing them several times a day.
In order to avoid the discomfort and boredom of the constant repetition of greetings, they simplified the approaches to the extreme of omitting the question and exchanging only the most basic of answers, “OK”.
The Perfect Panorama From Casa Iguana
A steep slope takes us to the property of Casa Iguana, a guest houses with an almost zero ecological impact that has been installed on a high ledge on the coast and has the best view of the island.
View of the promontory where the guest house Casa Iguana was installed.
"It's something really special, isn't it?" asks us Jeff, a kind of partner-overseer of the place who has moved from vast, frigid Canada to enjoy, for a while, the beauty and cozy warmth of that setting.
“I even get goosebumps when I come back here.”, he confesses to us. And it continues to contemplate the verdant forest of the interior, the curved coastline outlined by the sand and the blue Caribbean that meets it.
The sun falls over the horizon. Without any source of light, we worried about getting back to the west coast before the dark hid our paths.
Tropical meadow inland on Little Corn Island.
We follow a shortcut marked on the “official” sketch of the island. In an area almost at the top of the island, we come across an enigmatic yellowish meadow.
Beach Volleyball and Fresh Coconut Water
In the village, we stopped to watch the end of a home volleyball tournament on the sand. Adolescents and seasoned men dispute it.
Natives play volleyball, in a game that had ice cream in plastic bags as a prize.
Between headlines and effortless shots, they shout, argue and curse in both Castilian and piracy English, almost incomprehensible on the island.
Five hundred meters to the side, in a minimally planted beachfront bar, a group of Scandinavian visitors delights in drinking coconut water.
Resident picks coconuts on a quiet beach on Little Corn Island.
Esteban, the Hispanic owner, barman resident harvests them from a coconut tree in his backyard with the meticulous help of a machete and his wife. We join the conviviality.
We admire the simplicity of your business. We compare it to the frenzy of European daily life and praise the lazy life of those almost unknown Caribbean.
