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After a few days of lazing on a Pacific beach we thought we'd even it up by heading over to the Caribbean side to visit the Corn Islands. A short flight in an aging turbo-prop over the width of Nicaragua saw us touching down on Big Corn, where we were met at the airport by a taxi driver name David who took us to our guest house. We hired some bikes and pedaled around the island, dodging the occasional crazy rainstorm. The island isn't big but still took a few hours to see most of it. We lay on a pretty beach for a while and both got badly bitten by sand flies which Sophie had a severe allergic reaction to and ended up covered in itchy spots - not fun.
After a day or so on Big Corn we took a 'panga', an open speedboat across the very choppy water over to Little Corn. The voyage wasn't pleasant, there were lots of grim faces at the end of it and we were happy to be there. Little Corn was pretty much the same as Big Corn, except a whole lot smaller (the names do give it away). We walked the whole island in search of a decent beach which we eventually found but it was almost too windy to enjoy properly. A highlight of the trip was a rather scary walk through the pitch dark jungle at night to find a restaurant where we had an incredible meal before stumbling back through the dark.
We headed back to Big Corn the next day to find some antihistamines for Sophie as she really needed some proper medicine for those bites. I did a solitary dive to take a look at the offshore reef which was fine but the visibility wasn't great, although a rather large nurse shark did swim past at one point which was cool to see. To give you an idea of how small and interconnected the island is, every time we hailed a cab we ended up with the same driver, David, to his great amusement. As we drove he would point out where his parents, siblings and children lived, all just a few hundred metres apart from each other. We did try to cycle around the whole island but were given a friendly warning about being imminently mugged if we carried on along the path we were on, so we turned back the way had come and made a hasty exit, opting instead to take a shortcut home via the airport runway which was done for the day and therefore opened up to foot and bicycle traffic!
On our final night we were treated to the islands special dish, called Run Down. Basically a massive plate of a whole fish, some lobster tails, conch, shrimp, plantain, cassava, banana and pig trotter in a creamy coconut sauce. Very tasty and filling.
All in all we had a pleasant time although it wasn't really my favourite place we've been to. I guess we've just been spoilt in this trip so far!
Hope you're all well and happy,
KL
- comments
Mo Lawrence Glad to see you smiling on the runway Sophie :-) Hope all the itching is better. The meal looks fantastic.