NICARAGUA
Little Corn Island
December 22, 2004 - January 3, 2005

The red arrow is pointing to Little Corn Island. You can
see Big Corn Island just to the south of it.

Our cabin.	On the beach...our cabin up above.
	View from cabin porch.	The 3 windmills that generate Casa Iguana's power.
Pinapple growing	Stormy weather. Check out the wind in the trees.	Use stick to hit tank as a doorbell.
Our bathroom.		Walking into town on jungle path.
Pepper plant.	Moonrise	Noni plant (for medicinal purposes...kind of like aloe)
	Lobster at the Cool Shack.
No shoes in the lodge or other buildings.
	Spotted Eagle Ray...best thing we've ever seen snorkeling!
	Decisions...decisions.	Trash in a pit for burning.
Exterior of the Lodge at Casa Iguana.	Interior of the Lodge.	The honor system of keeping track of your drinks & meals.
French Toast from coconut bread.	After dinner at the lodge.
One of the 4 barracuda we caught.	You should see the teeth on this thing!
Can't get any sandier than this!
	Lunch at the Cuban place.	View from our bed.
Another view from our porch.		These guys are everywhere in all sizes and colors.
Internet Café at Casa Iguana. Runs on a satellite and a gas generator.		Interior of room. It was just like a cabin at camp.
View from the Leeward side. You can see Big Corn Island in the background.	Termite mound.	See our cabin above.
House in town.		Home made island coconut bread & apple turnovers.
	The list of the cabins for rent on the island. They are about $10 per night.	Our ride to and from Big Corn Island.
Drinking Fresca. The lady didn't want me to take her bottle and so she poured my drink into this bag and gave me a straw.

Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Anywhere that's really worth getting to requires a journey that is really unpleasant...or at least it seems that way.

Actually, if we'd lived in the southern half of the United States, the trip wouldn't have been that bad. But since we're in RI, reaching Nicaragua took us the better part of two days. Our flight to Managua, Nicaragua left from Miami on Thursday morning. And since there was no way to get from RI to Miami in time for the flight, we had to leave on Wednesday evening and stay overnight in Washington, DC.

Thursday, December 23, 2004
Rising at 4 in the morning (we stayed at a very nice and inexpensive airport Marriott), we took the plane to Miami and boarded a very nice flight to Managua, a plane that for once was quite comfortable and roomy. Managua airport is a work in progress and we don't know Spanish. But we did eventually reach the domestic terminal which is basically an unairconditioned shack with two desks for the two local airlines and countless people roaming about in abject confusion. To add to the excitement, one group had about 15 buckets of presents (food baskets) spread out all over the floor covering about half the waiting area which wasn't all that spacious to begin with. They were wrapping them with clear tape right there in the middle of the terminal while everyone stumbled around them trying to purchase plane tickets. In the middle of trying to deal with completing our purchase with La Costeña airlines, a representative of Atlantic Airlines was putting on the hard sell trying to steal us as customers. We had reservations with La Costeña, but he wanted to snipe us anyway and was telling us that we'd never get on the flight with them, the plane was already full, and other such bald face lies. Our years of traveling in Central America has made us wise to these sort of shenanigans though. We quickly realized he was a liar and honored our reservations. Perhaps as the only fluent English speaker in the domestic terminal he's able to drum up quite a bit of business in this fashion.

The plane itself (seating about 35) was the usual air disaster waiting to happen dating from WWII or perhaps earlier, but the ride was pleasant, the day clear, and the shoreline view of Nicaragua beautiful. It is a mix between farmland, swampland and mountains and included the enormous Lake Managua which takes up a considerable portion of the country. Much of the coast was actually something like the Everglades, but more of a tropical green. Nicaragua is the largest of the Central American countries.

After a quick stop in the coastal city of Bluefields, we headed off to Corn Island. A team of men unloaded the luggage onto a large cart while we were locked (yes, we said locked) in the terminal. By terminal of course, we mean a 20x10 grass roofed hut. The head baggage man then called out numbers on the claim tag one bag at a time and checked it against our stubs to guard against theft. We found out that we had been locked in the terminal (or more-so that the locals had been locked out) when we were the first who tried to leave with our bags and had to wait for the guy with the key.

It used to be that you could walk directly from the terminal to the dock in about 5 minutes, but the terminal has been moved to the opposite side of the airstrip which now requires a 10 minute taxi ride. Our taxi driver, Elvis, laughed when Stuart suggested that the taxi drivers had paid for the new terminal in order to get more work, but didn't deny the possibility.

When we reached the dock, we had to pay a port tax of 25¢ per person. Just about any public building you enter or use in Central America has some sort of $5 or less tax applied to it. We had already forked over $5 a piece to enter the country and then another $5 for the three of us to use the domestic terminal. In this case the charge was to get through the gate and probably paid for the time of the old man who sat there on guard duty which can be loosely defined as drinking beer with your buddies all day long. There were about 10 other passengers for the 35 minute ferry ride to Little Corn Island, our final destination 7 miles off the coast of Big Corn. We were the only travelers that actually had reservations on the island. But this is normal...it's pretty easy to get a $10-$20 per night shack on the beach on Little Corn, but you'd better remember to bring a flashlight because it gets dark fast and there's no electricity. There are also no roads, just a Byzantine tangle of paths through the jungle. Getting back to our boat ride over, the word ferry is overstating it. It looked kind of like one of those huge row boats that you see teams of lifesavers in the movies using. But this one had two very large outboard motors on the back and flew along at an amazing clip. And flying is a pretty good word for it because the boat comes right out of the water between the swells during the rougher parts of the journey. Today was a clear, calm day and it was quite exciting. We definitely wouldn't want to take that ride on a rough day (you can read about exciting ferry boat rides that we heard about from guests...we were very lucky).

Little Corn Island is quite small, maybe a mile long and a quarter mile wide. It has a population of under 1,000 if you count the tourists. The island basically has two sides, the windy side where we would be staying, which faces out to the ocean and the not windy side which was where we had arrived on the boat. Most of the businesses on the island are on this side where the dock was while the nice beach is on the windy side where the tourists stay. We were met at the dock by a very pleasant girl on a bike, Charnelle from New Zealand, who led us to Casa Iguana where we are staying. Pablo took our bags and followed us with them in a wheelbarrow.

Casa Iguana has the most luxurious accommodations on the island. This means that the shacks are electrified some of the day, have metal rooves instead of thatch, and the beds have mattresses. The electricity comes from small windmill generators that Uncle Bob, the engineer, maintains. Uncle Bob is what they call a working guest. He does technical chores like fixing washing machines and doing carpentry in exchange for free accommodations and food. There has been some nonviolent crime on the island lately including people getting mugged by machete wielding teenagers on the beach and petty theft. The staff here keeps a pack of hyper, small dogs that erupt into a frenzy of barking at any small movement during the night so we don't have any worries along those lines. It seems sort of dramatic, but it really isn't. There are always going to be problems of this type wherever you have tourists and we're sure that it is much safer here than in any big city back home.

Casa Iguana is run not only by the owners, Cathy and Grant, but also their managers, Camille and Bob. Camille and Bob just finished working in Maui and have also done a stint in Belize as managers. They get room and board as well as pay for running the place. They had just started this job about five days before we arrived so they are a little green with understanding how things work around here, but are learning quickly and all of our needs are getting taken care of AOK.

We arrived just in time for dinner which was excellent. All the food here except beverages is caught or grown on the island. The fish are mostly caught by tourists on fishing excursions and the vegetables come from the jungle, which is amazingly lush, and the Casa Iguana garden. Everything seems to bear a fruit of some kind or another. Last night we had lobster cakes, shrimp, fresh tomatoes and a vegetable mixture. It seemed to be breadfruit (sort of like a potato that grows above ground and is abundant on the island) and some other things we couldn't identify. Dessert was sautéed bananas with chocolate sauce. Everyone here eats together at one sitting and since there's nothing to do at night, most people seem to hang around at the dinner tables and talk for quite some time after the meal is finished. But we were tired and didn't stay long.

Casa Iguana has about 14 cabins of varying sizes. Drinks, meals, and other expenses are paid for on the honor system. You are assigned a little dry erase board where you write down your cabin number and your names. Then you mark down what you consume as you consume it and at the end of the trip you pay all at once for everything.

Friday, December 24, 2004 Christmas Eve
After a solid night's sleep with a Caribbean breeze to keep us cool and an orchestra of small insects singing to us from the jungle, Kim rose with the sun which wasn't difficult considering that there are no shades to keep out the light. Stuart of course slept like a log until breakfast time.

Breakfast was a choice of pancakes, french toast, or eggs with rice, beans & toast, each selection accompanied by a huge bowl of fresh, native fruit. It was all very good, if a little different and Stuart even tried a pepper from a large jar of spicy, preserved vegetables, that was sitting on every table as a condiment. It took him about 15 minutes to recover from the shock of it, but he still insists that it tasted really good and was worth it. Kim had some superb french toast and Miranda had pancakes which were a bit burnt around the edges. She said that tomorrow she's getting french toast as well.

And we are now sitting on our porch. Our cabin is on a small cliff right on the ocean and the waves are crashing just forty feet away. One of the reasons we came here was to snorkel and see the marine life and in fact we just saw a three foot nurse shark swim by. The water is amazingly clear.

After lounging around and reading all morning (Miranda did some sand castling and swimming as we looked on from our porch), we walked to town through the jungle trail and Miranda met a dog she had befriended the day before. Or at least we think it's that one. All the dogs on this island seem to be inbred and look the same. The town where we landed on the panga (we learned that this is the word for the boat that goes back and forth) yesterday has about three small hotels with little restaurants and a couple of grocery stores. The grocery stores are really just counters that you step up to and ask for what you want. While you can see some of the items, you aren't allowed to touch and a clerk brings you what you need. Grocery store is actually a gross overstatement because they have less stuff than your average American gas station.

We walked up and down the main drag which is a path about three feet wide and ate lunch at a Cuban restaurant. Our waitress didn't speak a word of English and we don't know Spanish, but we managed when the owner, Twila, came out from the kitchen to translate. Kim and Miranda had lobster in garlic sauce and Stuart had pork in a traditional Cuban brown sauce. After lunch Miranda went swimming with some small children at the beach that was in front of the restaurant. They couldn't understand each other because of the language barrier, but had fun anyway. We walked back through the jungle path to Casa Iguana and all went swimming together. The beach is nice, if a little heavy with seaweed and we already saw one large stingray swimming by and hope to see more when we snorkel.

After a lazy afternoon of swimming, reading and napping, we headed off to the lodge for dinner. Tonight supper was some kind of spicy stir fry over a bed of rice. There aren't many lights so you really can't see what you're eating, but it tasted good and might have been fish and lobster, but it pretty much could have been anything. Others at the table swore that it was chicken (but they were fussy eaters and wrong). We stayed later tonight and chatted with a couple from England and a family from Chicago who came to visit their daughter who's in the Peace Corps and stationed in Nicaragua. We also learned tonight that there have been a couple of rapes on the island in the past month so while it isn't cause for panic, we are going to follow the buddy system. Better safe than sorry.

Saturday, December 25, 2004, Christmas Day
Last night was not very restful as the dogs (island security system) at Casa Iguana were barking until 3am. Apparently there was lots of activity with it being Christmas Eve and the dogs were spooked by revelers coming home late and fireworks being set off, not to mention other dogs in the area barking. Hopefully we'll have a better rest tonight. Miranda slept through it all of course.

This morning we enjoyed our second delicious breakfast at the Casa Iguana lodge. True to her promise, Miranda ordered the french toast and Kim and Stuart both had the same as yesterday. After resting our stomachs for a bit, we headed off on a snorkel at Casa Iguana beach. Not too much to see when you compare it with Roatan, Honduras, but we did see some schools of fish and one really huge fish swimming about. We didn't stay out too long as the waves were really knocking us around...and today was a calm day. Tomorrow or the next we'll probably try our luck on the leeward side of the island where the panga dropped us off from Big Corn. We also have plans to check out a ship wreck off of Iguana Beach that everyone seems to be talking about.

After snorkeling, Miranda and Kim headed through the jungle into town for lunch. They went to the same place as we all ate lunch at yesterday, only this time in an effort to save both money and their appetites for tonight's turkey dinner, shared one order of garlic lobster. Stuart stayed behind to read his book and relax. Probably a smart choice as the skies opened up as Miranda and Kim finished lunch and they were quite wet by the time they arrived back at Casa Iguana. And then the sun came back out.

After a lazy afternoon of reading seaside, turkey dinner was served. We had popped up to the lodge around 4 to play cards before getting ready for dinner and were some of the few fortunate souls who got a treat of smoked barracuda hors d'ouvres. Back to dinner. The stuffing was out of this world! We had turkey, stuffing, carrots, potatoes & green veggies, and cranberry sauce. The chef worked all afternoon and it showed.

Last night at dinner we made some new friends from the UK, Paul and Caroline. They are leaving tomorrow, but we had dinner again with them again tonight. It was at dinner that we found out that it was in fact Caroline who had been mugged with the machete. She and Paul were walking down the beach when they reached a muddy part. Paul continued through, but Caroline darted around on a path that briefly went through the jungle and reconnected to the beach a minute later. It was in these seconds that she was approached and had her backpack taken along with digital camera and almost all their vacation pictures.The teenager(s), which as it turns out were from Big Corn Island, were apprehended and she had to go identify them and make a statement to the police. It is actually sort of unfortunate that the man who did it was over 18 because after that age it is a police matter. The locals explained that the young man will go to jail for six months to a year, but then get out and return to the island. What he most likely did with their belongings is bury them and will sell them upon his return when everyone has forgotten the incident. Although they left contact information, they will probably never have their camera returned. Had the man been under age, he would have been dealt with locally...this meaning he would have been flogged until they felt he was punished enough and until he admitted where the items were hidden. There is an unspoken rule among the locals here that he violated big time...don't touch the tourists. You can imagine how important this is when a small, poor island like this relies so heavily on the small amount of tourism that they do get.

Well, you might have thought that the island True Crime stories were over, but there's more where that came from. Earlier in the day while eating lunch, Kim and Miranda watched aghast as a young man in his twenties came staggering down the beach front path absolutely drenched in what appeared to be blood. He was covered from his head all the way over his face and torso. He was obviously drunk, but we still weren't sure whether it was in fact blood (had he just butchered a Christmas evening pig perhaps???) or red paint from some weird ritual or practical joke. So Miranda and Kim watched him stagger by and looked at each other in amazement, forgetting to tell Stuart about it when they returned from lunch with all the excitement from the sudden rain storm. Well, at dinner this evening, the story continued. Apparently, Paul and Caroline were at the little grocery store that we mentioned before getting some bottled water when said drunk and bloody guy staggered up to the counter and in some sort of Creole muttered, "Get me a beer, mon." The owner yelled at him that he was a mess and to look at himself and then told him to get his beer somewhere else. Miranda and Kim were right...the guy was in fact covered with blood...apparently stemming from some altercation that had taken place earlier in the day, related to the shenanigans of Christmas Eve at the Happy Shack which reportedly ended in a huge brawl in the early hours of the morning. Having had a closer look, Caroline said that the blood was coming from a cut to his head. You can only imagine how fast a story like this travels on the island and apparently people all the way down the beach front path were lining up outside their homes to watch the bloody man stumble by. We joked later that in a small community like this, he'll never be able to live down this story!

Sunday, December 26, 2004
Today started out very nice and it stayed that way until mid-afternoon once again. Typical island weather.

Because yesterday was Christmas, there was no baking done on the island. So much for french toast breakfast. Miranda and Kim had to switch to pancakes. We are wondering if they bake on Sundays. If not it will be pancakes again tomorrow!

After breakfast we relaxed back in the room, reading on the porch and Miranda went for a swim. The water was a little rougher than yesterday. At lunch time we walked over to the Hotel Delfines for lunch on the water on the leeward side. Their Aroz con Pollo (rice with chicken) was pretty good and Miranda was wishing that she had chosen that instead of spaghetti with vegetables (they were canned). There was actually a little breeze today over on the hot side which was surprising, but it was still a bit uncomfortable. Following lunch we returned to the windy side and went for a swim. It was quite nice for a while although the sand was more stirred up than yesterday and it was difficult to see where the sandy bottom was. Then all of a sudden, a very strong wind started kicking up and what a storm we had. Of course it only lasted for ten minutes, but it was something else. While the rain has ended, the wind remains. It is blowing things around more than ever...the most we've seen since arriving. But then again, island weather, good or bad, never seems to last too long. The wind will most likely fade away as quickly as it came. We feel bad for anyone traveling on the panga from Big Corn though...can't imagine what it must be like out there this afternoon!

After our swim while holed up in the cabin waiting for the wind to die down, Miranda and Kim faced off with a couple of card games while Stuart rested and read. Dinner tonight is pasta and veggies with or without fish depending on this afternoon's catch. With weather like this...we aren't too hopeful. We would imagine that they would have called it an early day with the seas this rough.

The one drawback to being on this side of the island is that we miss the sunsets. Rather we get to watch the moon rise which has been quite nice since it's a full moon, but sunsets are definitely prettier. Because it gets dark so quickly and the jungle path is precarious at best to navigate during the day, let alone after dark, we are not planning on staying on the leeward side to see a sunset and will have to be satisfied with what we have.

Well, back from dinner where we didn't have pasta at all. Turns out they bought barracuda and we each had a generous hunk with sauce over a bed of rice and veggies. Once again, the chef outdid himself. It was great and we don't even like fish that much. The best part about dinner was that we met a young couple from Pennsylvania and the four of us got to sit with Uncle Bob (mentioned back in Thursday's report). Uncle Bob comes to Little Corn four months on and four months off. He's a retired businessman from the Dallas, TX area who does electrical work, roofing, and whatever other work is necessary. He works in exchange for room and board and gets to eat with the guests too. He filled us in about a lot of details of island life.

Nicaragua goes right through Central America and has both Pacific and Atlantic coasts. The capital city, Managua, which we flew threw, and most of the other important places, are on the Pacific side or on a huge lake also on the western side of the country. There's no road that passes from the capital city to Bluefields on the east coast or any of the other towns on the Atlantic side. There's just a big mountain range and swamps in the way. This means that the whole Atlantic side of the country, pretty much has to govern itself. There isn't anyone here to enforce rules or run things unless they specifically call the federal police (federalés) for help. There are some good parts to this autonomy, but one of the bad parts is that the drug trade now flourishes and the product passes through Little Corn Island. Cocaine is the largest business here on the island, followed by lobster fishing, and then tourism. In fact, we had noticed that the dogs go nuts very early every morning waking us up. This is because the locals are walking up and down the beach in hopes that a bundle of cocaine has washed ashore, the result of some drug deal gone bad. The U.S. Navy patrols these waters and sometimes the couriers throw the stuff overboard before being caught. Bob and a group of night scuba divers once surfaced to find themselves covered by the guns of the U.S. Navy, who quickly departed after being assured that their activity was innocent. He pointed out that despite the general poverty on the island, there are a large number of high-speed boats moored offshore and that some of them have as many as three outboard motors, each one of which costs $24,000 American. That's not the kind of money you make fishing for lobsters. Bob says that when there's crime on the island it's almost always people who have come over from the mainland and are looking for a quick score. The islanders have little patience for this and the robbers should consider themselves lucky if they make it to the police alive. The hotel has been broken into, but only once and Bob tied them up and held them at gunpoint until they were taken away by the locals to await the arrival of the federalés.

Unfortunately, the abject poverty is not something that the locals can rise above. There is no future here on the island because they just don't make the connection between their behavior and how it affects their living. For instance, as we said above, lobster fishing is the second largest industry here and it has made a good living for a lot of people. But they have so thoroughly overfished the waters, ignoring the fishing seasons and rules that govern the catch, that the lobsters are no longer plentiful and it is getting worse with each passing year. The same thing with the tourist trade. Tourism is growing here, which is great, because it in some ways replaces the loss of lobstering, but the owner of the largest hotel in town dumps his entire business' trash in the harbor every week so that he won't have to bother burning it. He just doesn't understand that trash on the beach and in the water might make his customers less likely to return. This is amazing considering that selling a ten or a fifteen dollar meal to an American is a big deal to these folks because that is a lot of money! Things are much cheaper down here than at home and the tourism dollars go a long way because the tourists think that they are getting a good deal while the islanders can't believe how much they will pay. But then they go and do silly things like hunt turtles. Turtles are a big draw for scuba divers. But there are now very few left because people on the island hunt them and then sell the meat for $80 per turtle. That $80 is a huge amount of money and is apparently irresistible. But once the turtles are gone they are never coming back and the scuba diving tourists might do the same. This is not unique to Little Corn Island however and is a common problem throughout the third world whenever the immediate financial concerns of the local people overwhelm any long-term benefit that the preservation of their natural resources might provide.

The nice thing about sitting with Uncle Bob is that the four of us picked his brain all through dinner and afterwards and he was great about giving us the unvarnished truth. Aside from answering questions about the drug trade, how they deal with crime and the island economy, he told us lots of details about the daily running of Casa Iguana. First of all, termites are eating the place from the ground up and lumber continually has to be replaced on all the structures. A local man crawls under each building daily to scrape away any visible termite infestations. They are now importing pressure-treated lumber from Home Depot which is shipped here via sea-freight via Miami, but they are lucky if they receive 70% of what they ordered because there is so much theft at the ports in between. They just got a new washing machine and it took them all day to get it to work because there is no running water here and the electricity is direct current and not as strong as it is at home. Eventually they had to hook up a special generator just for the washing machine and rewire all its switches to allow them to pour water in by bucket before it began its cycle. The only trick now is to get it to pump water out afterwards, but he thinks he has that nailed too. He also says that the pack of dogs that they use for security here at the Iguana, cause their own challenges. First of all there is no dog food available and so they have to make their own mixture of boiled fish heads and rice which apparently stinks to high heaven but the dogs don't seem to mind. There aren't any vets on the island (heck, there is only even a part time doctor who works in the health clinic that looks significantly dirtier than our garage) so the owners here put an ad on the Internet offering to exchange a free two week vacation with any vet who would be willing to volunteer his services in exchange. All the dogs are now very healthy...as well as spayed and neutered. And we're not talking about just the Casa Iguana dogs...they rounded up all the strays they could find and treated them all in a makeshift operating room that the vet put together in the dining room on one of the tables where they serve meals. Uncle Bob wouldn't tell us which table.

We could go on for pages with all the things Uncle Bob told us from how they use the solar panels and turbines to generate electricity to how the natives who care about their children at all send them off the island for their schooling because the school here is useless. We learned that any of the town supplied electricity comes from a huge gas-powered generator donated by the country Denmark which seems a little silly considering that if they had some large windmills set up on the windy side of the island, they could probably power all of Rhode Island. Lastly we learned that Casa Iguana can be yours for only $1,000,000 USD. Cathy and Grant Peeples, the owners who built this from scratch nine years ago, would like to get away from the daily grind of the hospitality industry combined with the continual upkeep of an island property and the Byzantine local arrangements that are required to get almost anything done from buying bread to getting mail.

Remember, Little Corn Island has no addresses for a reason. There is absolutely no mail service. Cathy and Grant will often ask returning guests to bring them supplies or mail or even money (Grant's mom will send them a check to cash from Casa Iguana stateside account). Despite what you may see on TV commercials, UPS does not deliver to Little Corn Island.

Uncle Bob also gave us some hints on where we should be snorkeling because we were not too happy with our first underwater outing. The wind is still going strong, but if it dies down by morning, we're planning on snorkeling at 11am with our new friends from Pennsylvania.

Monday, December 27, 2004
Well, the storm is still raging. The wind never did die down and blew at gale force strength all night and all day with the rain pelting down on and off. At 9am we headed over to the lodge to see about breakfast wondering if they were even cooking, and lo and behold, practically every guest was there either eating or playing games. We ate and stayed on playing games and relaxing until just before noon.

During the afternoon Stuart and Kim took a walk into town. The mud was incredible and quite slippery and it's a wonder that we didn't fall. It was in fact much less windy on the other side...not calm mind you...but less stormy. Of course it poured half the time and we got drenched. After picking up some snacks we headed back to the cabin to read and relax - all while wondering if the cabin was going to blow over from the strength of the wind. The wind is really rattling the rafters and the palm and coconut trees are bending over under the stress. Naturally, we can't open the windows to get a cross draft and it's starting to get sticky inside. On the positive side, the storm is bad enough to have the dogs put inside for most of the day so at least we haven't had to listen to much barking.

Dinner is supposedly seafood stir-fry. Stuart and Miranda opted to have the lobster though!

Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Well, last night was in fact seafood stir-fry. It was very good, although Stuart and Miranda's lobster was exceptional. Usually Caribbean lobster is salty, but cooked correctly, you can eliminate much of the saltiness and this lobster was cooked very well. We stayed on and talked after dinner for a while with new friends from the previous evening, Sam and Kim.

Unfortunately, when we awoke, things were not much improved in the weather department. This was no surprise seeing that we were up half the night as the wind was rattling the rafters and shaking the foundation so much so that it seemed that the entire cabin was going to be torn out of the earth and thrown into the jungle. At breakfast time we staggered through the jungle being blown about and rained upon to once again find a full-house at the lodge. We stayed there reading and playing games until about 1pm when it appeared to be clearing up.

During the afternoon Miranda came back to the cabin while Kim and Stuart went on a nice walk down the beach, thankful not to be cooped up indoors any longer. The weather appears to be turning for the better, but we don't want to get our hopes up too much. At least the horizon is now bright.

On our walk down the beach we despaired at the amount of trash that had washed up ashore with the storm. There are yards of it covering the coastline and it looked like a very narrow municipal dump. What a shame that they can't see beyond their laziness. Those on the island who want to do the right thing burn and then bury their trash. Too bad there seem to be very few who take this approach. The island's beaches are becoming ruined. The ocean to a visitor seems so beautiful and precious, but to them it's more of a convenient place for rubbish disposal.

Well, after one last hurrah of driving rain and wind around 5pm, the storm finally pulled out of the area. By the time we finished dinner, the moon and stars were out and everyone in the lodge was cheering. We ate dinner tonight with Tim and his wife, the married couple who run the dive shop. They just started ten days ago after working for a year in the Philippines. They have also run dive shops on Utila, Honduras, Thailand, and Egypt. They have been diving in Guatemala, Egypt and a host of other places around the globe. Their entire lives can fit into two backpacks...and that includes their diving equipment and a laptop computer! They were very interesting to talk to and we heard all sorts of fun stories about their travels. They have no money, no address, no bank account and no bills. A lot of people who work here at Casa Iguana live similar lifestyles...almost like migrant workers bopping around semi-resort locations in developing countries and seeing the world on the cheap. They don't get paid much more than the locals do, which believe me isn't much, and are mostly in it for room, board and an airplane ticket to their next destination. Tim and his wife though, had actually gone to Canada for one week prior to starting employment on Little Corn because Tim hadn't been home to see his mom in over three years. His wife's family is a little more adventuresome and they occasionally come to visit wherever she is working.

If this nice weather holds, we are definitely going out on the 9am or 11am snorkel/scuba boat in the morning! Heck, we could even do both!

Wednesday, December 29, 2004
It was touch and go early this morning when the skies opened up around 6:30am (just in time for everyone who was taking the 7am panga ride to Big Corn). But we could see some clear skies on the horizon and when the rain had stopped by 7:30 we decided to go for it and head out for the 9am snorkel. Kim ordered one breakfast and ate a piece of french toast and some fruit so that her stomach wouldn't be too full or too empty for swimming and Miranda did her the favor of having the leftovers as her breakfast. At a little before 9am, Stuart and Kim braved the muckiest muck, walking to the dive shop in town over the muddied path that had been made much worse in the storm over the past couple of days. Because we brought our own equipment, snorkel trips are only $5 per person and well worth it. We went to the reef known as John's Garden and had an hour to enjoy. The water was quite rough and we swallowed a bit of the sea with such big waves washing over our snorkels, but that's par for the course. The reef was very well preserved, but once again not too many fish to speak of. We're beginning to think that it's overfished perhaps that's why we aren't seeing as much marine life as we're used to. What we did see were some gigantic starfish, some with spots and some without, and Kim really enjoyed that! The reef was about 12-15 feet below the surface so we did quite a bit of diving down to get a good look which really tires you out. All in all, the reef was not as colorful or plentiful as on Roatan, Honduras, but was in better condition. We are hoping to get in a couple more trips to different reefs before leaving so hopefully we'll see some more diversity. I hear people talking about turtles, sharks and eels, so we remain hopeful that we'll get to see at least one of the three.

We finally got to have lunch at the famed Miss Elsa's, just a five minute walk down Iguana Beach. Her place is famous among the tourists for her cheap and delicious fresh fish and lobster dishes. While her prices are no longer cheap (the locals have finally caught on to what tourists are willing to pay for lobster), her cooking is out of this world! We each got two lobster tails that must have been very lightly battered and deep fried, rice and beans, coleslaw like salad, and fried plantains. Actually, Miranda got french fried breadfruit which was pretty darned close to actual french fries. Once again, the meal was very well cooked and presented and well worth what they were charging even if they had inflated the prices. We will definitely go back before leaving the island...probably even tomorrow.

After lunch Kim took Miranda back down Iguana Beach towards Miss Elsa's for a swim (she has the most divine beach on the island) and they made it back before the skies opened up for the usual mid-afternoon rainstorm. Now it's time for some rest and relaxation to build up our appetites for dinner.

Miranda spent the latter part of the afternoon up at the lodge and Kim joined her around 5 and then Stuart a short while later. We met Lynn and her son Mackenzie and her two nieces as well. Miranda was in heaven. The kids are 13, 14 and 16 and they had a ball before, during and after dinner. They are fortunate to even be here after a harrowing boat ride that could have been disastrous. Yesterday afternoon their plane arrived late and along with some others who also needed to get to Little Corn, they hired a small boat. It was 5:30pm and beginning to get dark, but the "captain" assured them that it would be no problem. Well, after being out a little while, Lynn realized that they were lost...on the open ocean, in the dark and in very high seas. Not the situation you want to be in while stuffed on a glorified skiff. She offered said captain her compass and he was thrilled, but before she could get it out of her luggage though, he and his mates spotted the lights on land. Thank goodness. It took them almost an hour to return to Big Corn because the swells were stopping them and they had to double back. What a story!

Dinner was barracuda fillets on a bed of vegetable hash browns. It was topped with fresh salsa and we had green beans on the side. Barracuda, at least the way they cook it here, is about the best fish we've ever had. It is not a strong taste and is very fleshy and seems like it would be easy to work with unlike scrod which falls apart on the grill. We're thinking that barracuda is probably the only fish we've had. Our other meals have been shrimp and lobster.

After dinner Miranda and her new friends played a few raucous games of cards along with a wild game of scrabble, but at 9pm, all the adults were finally ready to head back to their respective cabins and we called it a night.

Oh, we found out something pretty funny tonight at dinner. We didn't eat at Miss Elsa's after all. We apparently ate at the Cool Shack which is next door to Miss Elsa's. How we could walk right by Miss Elsa cooking on a grill on the sand is beyond us, but we did. The Cool Shack was so good though, we might go back.

Snorkeling tomorrow at 11am if the weather holds. Tonight we enjoyed moonlight and lots of stars so we're keeping our fingers crossed for morning.

Thursday, December 30, 2004
So it was a beautiful morning...that is until we boarded the boat to snorkel. And then the skies opened up with a cold pelting rain that seemed like sleet as we skimmed across the water to White Holes. We couldn't believe it. Gorgeous all morning long and then a freak storm rushes in. With the speed of the boat combined with the size of the raindrops, it really hurt. Fortunately for us the storm went as quickly as it came and by the time we arrived at the White Holes site the rain had stopped and the sun was trying to poke through.

Today we were with a dive group which was kind of interesting because most of the time we just shadowed the scuba divers from above and then dove down for a closer look whenever they discovered anything interesting. The first thing we saw was a massive nurse shark, much larger than the ones we had seen in the Grand Caymans. We couldn't see his head because he was sort of sleeping in the sand under a rock, but he was impressive none the less. The quality of this dive site was much better than the others we have tried with interesting coral, more fish, and cool creatures. But the wave swells were also impressive, raising and dropping us as much as eight feet. If you relax though, you learn to float along like a pebble in the ocean and after a while you don't really notice how much you are moving around. The best thing we saw, which probably made the whole trip worth it, was a massive Eagle Ray, which is sort of like a sting ray, only three times the size and with a cool, spotted pattern on its back. It was also very thick with an incredibly long tail. We spent a lot of time following this guy around until Kim was attacked by a Sharksucker (Remora). We didn't know what this was at the time, but we now know they are parasite fishes that attach themselves via suction to large marine animals like sharks or rays and keep them clear of algae. There's nothing sinister about them because all they want to do is give you a nice cleaning-off, but they are persistent buggers and are kind of like a bee chasing a lady at a church picnic. No matter how much you run, when you turn around, there they are. Kim thought it was trying to bite her and no matter how much splashing, kicking and swimming fast she did, it still shadowed her all the while poking her body with its mouth trying to get a good grip. Stuart eventually managed to get it more interested in him than her and then scared it away by slapping the ocean with the palm of his hand which fish don't like. Unfortunately, Eagle Rays don't like that either, and our new friend was no where around when we looked after the Sharksucker incident.

After snorkeling it was time for lunch and we headed down to Miss Elsa's. Unfortunately for us it was Miss Elsa's 56th birthday and she was two sheets to the wind or maybe even three. After kissing us like long-lost relatives, she assured us that she was celebrating so hard only because you never know if you're going to make it to 57. At least that's what we think she was saying because she was speaking in Spanish and using a lot of sign language with her husband translating a little. Needless to say, she was not open for business and told us that we'd have to come back tomorrow. We ended up at the Cool Shack again for lobsters all around. I think half of the Casa Iguana guests were there too. It took quite a while to get our food.

We had a wonderfully lazy afternoon of reading and relaxing and dinner was lobster/seafood cakes, fruit & vegetable salad, and a broccoli and potato medley. It's always hard to tell exactly what you're eating though because the light in the dining room is pretty dim.

The stars tonight are amazing! It's not too often you get to look at a sky like this in pitch blackness and it sure is dark here which is perfect for stargazing. Hopefully this will mean nice weather again tomorrow because we have another snorkel trip to Shark Hole booked for 9am in the morning.

December 31, 2004 New Year's Eve
Stuart and Kim were up nice and early...Kim was out and taking pictures and eating breakfast at 6:40 and Stuart was up at 8...all for the supposed morning snorkel. We got down to the dive shop, lathered up with sun lotion, and gear organized, only to find out that they had forgotten that we were snorkeling and they had changed plans and were going to a deep dive site. Typical island organization. We were a bit miffed, but what are you going to do. The plans changed because the reef was too rough to navigate to Shark Hole, but had they remembered us, they could have done a shallow spot that was good for both divers and snorkelers.

We relaxed back at the cabin for a little bit before heading to Miss Elsa's for lunch and a swim. But the wind was something else, the surf was amazingly rough, and Miss Elsa was no where to be found. Perhaps she was sleeping off yesterday's hangover or starting her New Year's Eve celebrations early???

So after two disappointments in a row, we gathered out things and headed off to the leeward side for lunch and swimming where things were markedly calmer and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. It's amazing what walking a quarter of a mile can do. We ate at the Cuban place again (this time Stuart had steak and Kim tried shrimp in Cuban sauce) and then went swimming while awaiting our 2:30pm fishing trip with Mike. Miranda played with some island kids on the beach rolling around in the sand and the surf until Stuart and Kim headed out fishing. While the watchful eyes of Mom and Dad were gone, Miranda and the island kids decided to jump off one of the unattended boats (all the kids on the island seem to do this and no one pays attention). It wasn't long before Miranda's foot got stuck in some boards on the bottom of the boat and the fun was over. She sat on the shore for a while before limping off to the dive shop to rest her foot. Aside from a nasty bruise, her foot will be fine. The funny thing is that back at home, no one would ever allow children to use their expensive boat as a diving board, but here in the land without lawyers, no one cares.

The fishing trip was exciting...the boat was small and the waves were large! We did trolling, which is when you drag the bait behind your boat while driving around outside the reef. The kinds of fish they catch around here are King Mackerel and Barracuda and the bait were small fat fish about eight inches long. We each caught two Barracuda, three of which will be used for supper sometime in the very near future. Thoroughly soaked and with sore hands from holding the poles so tightly while trying to keep our balance on the pitching boat, we finally headed back to shore after two long hours. We had always heard that fishing was relaxing...not here. This kind of fishing is a full contact sport and you should see the teeth on those barracuda! They are real predators. Mike took a disgusting picture of Kim and Stuart holding the slimy, bloody fish.

Dinner tonight is actually barracuda that Jen and Jeff (honeymooning couple staying at Casa Iguana) caught yesterday. Tonight though Kim ordered the lobster tail dinner like Stuart and Miranda had earlier in the week.

At dinner tonight we met Rochelle, a young woman from Australia who works in London, but travels extensively and mostly on her own. She works and saves up enough money to go and then takes on another job when she returns. She is a pensions analyst who works on contracts of varying lengths which allows her to travel between contracts without having to take time off. She has been to Belize, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and Egypt to name just a few countries as well as parts of the East Coast of the USA. It's so much fun to meet others who enjoy the types of travel and places that we do. Of course, at some of the places she's been she has stayed at hostels and gone on camping and on kayaking trips...maybe just a bit too "roughing it" for us...but really great to hear about none the less.

We left the New Year's Eve revelers in the lodge around 8:15pm to come back and read and go to sleep. Just can't keep up with the youngins' any more.

Saturday, January 1, 2005, New Year's Day
We spent New Year's Day relaxing and snorkeling. In the morning we hung out and read and Miranda and Kim played some cards. Hungry from the exhausting morning of napping, we headed down the beach for lunch. As expected, Miss Elsa was not open for business, so it was back to the Cool Shack. Miranda and Kim had chicken seeing that they were out of langosta (Spanish for lobster) and Stuart tried the fish. His arrived fried whole...head and all with eye staring and teeth bared...it actually looked vicious in a deep fried kind of way...and just a tad unappetizing for uninitiated fish eaters like us. But he ate it all (well...not the head) and we walked back down the beach to the room to get our snorkeling stuff. It was a horribly rough day, but Stuart was determined to brave the white caps and rough surf and head to the reef about a quarter-mile (maybe a little less, but it's hard to tell) off shore. The water fought us all the way and it seemed that for every three feet we swam, we were pushed back two. It took forever and the reward was not very good. The water and sand were quite stirred up around the reef from the killer surf and we were getting knocked around by the waves so much that we had to be really careful not to get too close to the reef for fear of getting raked over the coral. It was an effort in futility and the visibility was horrible. Fortunately, swimming back to shore was with the waves and a heck of a lot easier. Our legs and arms were burnt out and we were planning on this almost free ride back to the water's edge.

And because we hadn't had enough water (sarcasm intended here), after returning from our adventure, we all walked over to the leeward side and had a comfortable swim in the calm waters. Miranda was really looking forward to this as the water on our side was a bit too rough to be inviting today.

Seeing that Chef is still away in Bluefields for a New Year's overnight, Cathy (one of the owners) did most of the cooking with the assistance of Mady, the soux chef and breakfast chef who has worked at Casa Iguana for years. We had conch fritters, a lovely tomato, cucumber & onion salad, and a potato medley, which turns out wasn't potato after all, but a white variety of plantain. I love potato and this was REALLY convincing!

We found out this afternoon that Mike the fisherman got fired this morning and Per, a 23 year old gentleman from Sweden, is the new fisherman. We have no idea why Mike got fired...something about not performing and maybe not being a team player??? Who knows...but we're not really sure what would be expected of someone being paid $18 per day including room and board. Island life is quite different from at home and staff seem to come and go with the changing of the tides almost.

Just as a side note, we have had two different people this trip mention how wonderful the diving is in the Red Sea in Egypt. The northern part is less advanced, but the southern section requires advanced certification with at least 60 dives under your belt because of the size of the creatures and the steepness of the underwater terrain. In some places there are 300 foot drop-offs within twenty feet of the beach.

Tomorrow is our last day before leaving bright and early Monday morning.

Sunday, January 2, 2004
We haven't mentioned the Thailand tsunami disaster here because it doesn't have much to do with our trip, but as an aside, we had considered Thailand for this winter's vacation and had even gone as far as to purchase a book about it. We ended up putting the idea on the back burner until a later date because we didn't feel that we would have had enough time to thoroughly explore the area in only ten days.

We had our usual for the last breakfast and then went to the Casa Iguana fruit and vegetable garden to have a look around. Grant was there and gave us a tour...we saw all his peppers: trinidad, habeñeros, and halapeños. He also showed us which plants were papaya and told us how different papaya can be ranging from orange in color with a squash-like consistency to something that is almost like watermelon. We found it surprising that they have to irrigate seeing that it rains so often here, but then again, this isn't the dry season. Grant said it's harder to get things to grow here than you think because of how much the weather fluctuates and the severe wind and rain on this side of the island can be the end of a plant in no time.

Snorkeling just wasn't appealing to us on our last day so after hanging out all morning, we went for a walk to explore the rest of the town which we had not seen earlier in the trip. It was time well spent. We got an even better feel for the island and the life of the locals. The living accommodations are the bare minimum at best and while some of the homes seem well cared for indoors, we only saw a handful that were taken care of on the outside as well. For the most part no one spends any time gardening or making things pretty out of doors and at almost every house there was trash strewn everywhere, things rusting in the yards and basically junk everywhere. It was Sunday so all the girls were walking around in cute little dresses and men were relaxing in hammocks and kids crowded around the houses with televisions looking in from outdoors. While there were some homes with satellite dishes, more often we think that they were just watching movies on VCR or DVD player. With the island as damp as it is, we are always amazed that electronics last at all. They must have to repair or repurchase more often than in drier or climate controlled environments. Some homes were nothing more than four posts about eight feet apart with tin nailed up in between and on the roof. It is a very tough life for many islanders.

The best part of what we did today was to visit one of the cocoanut bread ladies. There are a few on the island who bake and while the first we came across was closed, the second was bustling. We were greeted by a gentleman in a hammock out by the front of the house, who pointed the way to the bread when he saw us tentatively eying the sign. Not only did we get the last loaf (until 3pm that is), we each got an apple cinnamon turnover thing which was really tasty! The bill was about $1.25. Mmmmmmm...so delicious! We picked up a big bottle of orange soda (Mirinda) and took turns chugging on that while devouring our turnovers and cocoanut bread all the way back to Casa Iguana.

Miranda and Kim each went for the lobster tonight as a last hurrah...plus we're really sick of fish despite chef's excellent cooking. Stuart had what was probably the barracuda that we caught fishing the other day.

It was touch and go for a bit before dinner when we had no electricity and couldn't pack, but luckily they had it up and running by dinner's end and we were able to come back and collect all our junk and shove it into the back packs. Some of our clothing has mold on it...one of the pitfalls of a moist climate. There isn't any article of clothing that won't hit the laundry upon our return. Probably even the sneakers...the dirt and mud here is RED and not only has it discolored our feet, but it's apparently a permanent stain on any clothing it gets on to.

Monday, January 3, 2005
We had some great food today...or maybe it was that we've been eating fish for eleven days. Our La Costeña flight was late by over an hour and we were hungry so Kim popped over to the little place across the street. The tacos were out of this world!!!!

Finally on our way, we made it to the Managua airport riding on a 12 passenger Cessna. After getting checked in with American (the line was actually considerably shorter and better organized than in Providence) we found something to eat. At a little stand outside of the domestic terminal, grandma was doing some cooking and the enchiladas were great!

At the security check-point in Managua we were laughing when we found that there was both a men's and ladies' line. Now we're on the plane heading home.

Travel update. After ONE HOUR AND TEN MINUTES we retrieved our luggage in Miami, thus missing our flight. We took a standby flight (and thankfully made it) to Laguardia in NYC and rented a car and drove the four hours home. We arrived at 4am. Not a pleasant way to end the trip!

Vacation is over and it's back to the old grind. Here are the top things we'll miss and...those that we won't!

Top 12 Things We'll Miss (in no particular order)
1) Cocoanut bread french toast
2) Lobster
3) Cool ocean breezes and warm sunshine
4) Snorkeling with an eagle ray
5) Eating every night with friendly travellers
6) An amazingly starry sky
7) The carefree pace of island life
8) Swimming whenever you want
9) Being so close to everything on the island
10) Time spent with family
11) Waking up and seeing and hearing the waves
12) Reading on the hammock.

Top 11 Things We Won't Miss (in no particular order)
1) Cold showers and no water pressure
2) Bugs that get into everything
3) Having to put all toilet paper into the trash and not the toilet
4) Walking through the mud to get to town
5) The smell of dead bait in town
6) Storms that appear with little or no warning
7) Nothing really ever dries
8) Litter
9) Barracuda (this one is Miranda's)
10) Repetitive diet
11) Unreliability and quality of the electricity