Wee little airplane
Flying over Big Corn Island
Speedboat overloadThis last leg of the journey was by far the worst boat ride I have ever taken in my entire life and I will spend the rest of my life trying to never experience a boat ride like it again. Because of the fullness of the boat –my only choice was to take a seat at the very front of the boat facing backwards – I was seated directly across from a couple of guys from Vancouver (incidentally) who graciously donated their knees to my vice grip as I tried to weather the bumpy ride without throwing up or falling out. With my back to the waves I was very happy that the guy onto whose knees I was hanging for dear life provided me with an excellent early warning system for the worst of the bumps as he commented every few moments “oh, this is going to be big” “oh - another big one” after a while, I could tell how hard I should hold on by the amount of feeling he put into his “oh”s .
After about forty minutes of bouncing along through the swells – we finally reached beautiful Little Corn and immediately set out to find a place to stay – greeted by a friendly Australian dive instructor named Jeff who gave us some helpful direction, we wandered over to the “other side” of the island, surveyed all the available places (there were about four little hotels in a row all renting out cute little beach bungalows) and in the end decided to splurge on the more upscale locale of the bunch – brand new and equipped with very comfy mattresses and a private bathroom with shiny white tiles and lovely new wood paneling. We managed to get a good deal on our room, moved our stuff in, got the orientation chat from the manager and got a free welcome Tona (the national beer) which we promptly followed up with another and began to feel settled into our new digs.
Beautiful Little Corn Island
We decided to check out the bonfire/barbecue at a place called the Happy Hut that Jeff had invited us to. On the way we passed the three other bungalow renting establishments on the beach and ran into a crowd of very drunk people, which was surprising since we had seen all the same people completely sober only a few hours earlier and now they were falling all over each other and could barely walk – we followed them halfway to the bonfire at which point they wandered off in another direction – leaving us in alone the jungle with Jeff and a guy named Charlie who turned out to be the manager of the biggest bungalow renting establishment on the island, called Casa Iguana. The bonfire had yet to be lit, so we grabbed a plate of barbecued chicken and chatted with a combination of locals and expats who had been working and living on the Island for various periods of time.
Finally the huge pile of wood and various other debris was lit - with a flourish of pride from the pile builder - it was very pretty, but as I went to have a closer look I began to ponder the logic of lighting a massive bonfire in place that is incredibly hot to begin with – as I voiced my concern over this situation I was given several explanations for the practice –A.) It’s something to do, B.) It’s pretty and C.) It’s a competition – because there are at least three bonfires a week in three different places that all try to top each other with the size of their fire. This particular fire was so large that it threatened to set the tree above it up in flames – but thankfully, it didn’t. After the charm of the fire wore off we headed off to play some pool for a bit, and then sat on the beach for a bit, then walked home under the stars with the waves lapping at our feet – not a bad first night in a tropical paradise.
The next morning we went out on a little panga to the north end of the island to do some snorkeling. The view on the way there was amazing; I have never seen such clear blue water and such a concentration of palm trees on beaches. We arrived at the first snorkeling site, jumped in the water and put on our gear. I never thought I was one to get easily seasick, but this trip is certainly proving me wrong – after about half an hour of looking down onto the incredible coral formations, and all kinds of many colored many shaped fish, I began to feel a bit queasy – I’m not sure if it was the motion of the waves or the few mouthfuls of incredibly salty water I had taken in – or that I ate something bad for breakfast – but after another half an hour all I could do was float on my back in order to not throw up.
It is a terrible feeling being sea sick while you are in 30 feet of water and miles away from any shore but It was either that, or sit in the rocking boat and the scorching sun waiting for the others to come back and since neither option was ideal – I chose the cool water. Luckily I had managed to see some great underwater sights before I became too overwhelmed by my bout of seasickness – and I have to say, the feeling that comes with watching stingrays and nurse sharks swimming around below you definitely compensates for the feeling of your stomach being turned inside out and sloshed about by the constantly moving water. Eventually we got back in the boat and headed for site number two. I really hoped that my stomach would recover, but when I got back in the water and had a look see at the sea floor – I immediately felt unwell again – so I floated around on my back for half an hour and finally we headed back to dry land.
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