A Three Day Journey

Trip Start Nov 11, 2008

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Nicaragua Bluefields, Nicaragua
Friday, April 3, 2009

Rikki and I really wanted to go to this little island that we had heard about called Little Corn, off the Caribbean coast. The problem was it would either be a $200 flight or a pain in the ass to get to. At this point in our trip we are two withdrawals away from broke so a flight was definatley not an option. We decided to go it the long way round and travel by land and sea.

We left from Leon and caught a bus to the capital city Managua by 9am. We got there in about an hour and 15 minutes. Unfortunately there are two bus terminals in Managua and the bus we caught from Leon did not go to the same terminal as the bus that left for the east coast. But we weren't discouraged. We would catch a city bus to take us to the other terminal across town. Well, that bus took forever. It took the same amount of time it took the other bus to get from Leon to Managua, and it was way overloaded and we had to sit with our bags piled on top of us. By the time we caught our next bus it was close to noon and there was no way we were going to make it to Rama, so we decided to go half way to a town called Juigalpa. Unfortunately all we saw of Juigalpa was our hotel room and a Tip-Top, which is a fast food establishment specializing in fried chicken and table service...

The next morning we caught an early bus to Rama, a seedy town where you catch a panga boat (skiff) up the river to Bluefields. We ended up waiting for 3 hours before a boat was full enough to leave. The boat ride was an hour and a half and was very scenic.

We smelt Bluefields before we saw it. We arrived on a shambled panga dock with lots of raggedy toothed men grabbing at us and our bags trying to "help" us. We pushed past them and unavoidably walked through the dodgiest part of town where all the accommodations rent out their rooms at hourly rates. Apparently there is a lot of prostitution in town... and cockroaches! Everywhere you stepped were dead cockroaches. We walked out of shitsville and found a disgusting place for $12 a night and then a bearable place for $9 a night.

After we dumped our bags, we headed down to the ferry dock to see about catching a boat to Big Corn. We arrived on Friday and The Lonely Planet said that the ferry was scheduled to leave Saturday night, but when we got to the dock we couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone. No one seemed to know when the boat left, even the people that worked in the offices. We finally got the jest that the next night the ferry was leaving would be Wednesday. 5 days of waiting in Shitsville! Neither of us was willing to stay in the horrible town of Bluefields, so after all the trouble to travel the cheap way, we ended up having to buy a flight for $60USD each to Big Corn. It was a bummer.

The next day we flew a beautifully scenic flight to Big Corn. Total flight time: 20 minutes. When we got to big corn we caught an hour long panga boat which finally got us to Little Corn Island.