Christmas on Big Corn Island
Trip Start
Dec 2007
1
15
30
Trip End
Feb 2008
Big Corn Island,
Nicaragua
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
The Corn Islands are quite unusual in that they are a Caribbean Island with lovely white sand beaches and lots of sunshine but the people are very withdrawn and not at all interested in the tourist. Big Corn Island is actually quite small and probably has two resorts and under 30 other lodgings. The main street is not inviting and there are very limited tourist facilities outside the hotels.
We were advised to catch taxis most places as crime has been on the increase and always to catch taxis at night. There are no supermarkets, one bank and no ATM facilities. The island uses USD or Cordoba as does most of Nicaragua.
We did walk down the beach to the main town, only about 2kms away. We had to leave the beach and ended up going through a shanty town skirting it and the rubbish dumps whilst everyone came out to see what we were doing. They werent very welcoming and it wasnt a walk we were going to take again.
We stayed at the Picnic Center which has a fabulous beach right outside our room. It is owned by an ex-pat from Mississippi called Jim or Mr Jim to all his staff. He has lived there for 18 months and doesn't miss the US at all but would rather be in a larger town where he can buy things at shops instead of having to have things flown in.
The Picnic Center is looking a little tatty but the beach more than made up for that. The staff at the Picnic Center were dire and quite surly. To get breakfast, we would wait 10-15 minutes for someone to come over and see what we wanted, then we would ask for a menu, finally one would come back 10 minutes later. The food generally arrived anytime and never with cutlery which you had to go and get or wait for the staff to finally come over.
The food was bad and other than Christmas Day when all the locals turned up for the meat specials, we avoided it. Having said that pancakes for Christmas brunch were great, once we approached Mr Jim to get them as the staff were insistent that we couldn't have breakfast only the lunch special.
We spent a couple of nights with rum on the beach, the Picnic Center seemed to close as soon as Mr Jim left, which of course we told him and the next night it was open a lot longer. The staff were really beginning to get on our nerves.
The mossies are vicious at the beach and we needed the super strength repellent to retain any blood!
A particularly happy night with the Norwegians saw us seriously deplete our rum supply, a scary thought given we didn't know where to restock. The great thing about the Nica rum is that no matter how much we drunk (and you know we did!), there was no hangover. A mighty dangerous situation leading to an ambition to have at least 2 days alcohol free each week. (no doubt there will be comments posted on that!).
Christmas day was actually a very lazy day with a sleep in, 1.5 hours bobbing around in the sea, pancakes for brunch, a siesta, two more hours bobbing around in the sea and finally a seafood Christmas meal complete with dangerously sweet and alcoholic pinacoladas. We duly got out the Christmas babbles stolen from the NZ Society drinks (thanks Romy), hung them to our pinacoladas and took the required photos. The surly waitress was very intrigued with out babbles and we gave four to her and received our first ever smile from her. Pictures to be posted later!
