Granny’s Old Corns

Tin Can to Button Moon

We left Granada and caught a chicken bus to Managua, where we then caught another bus to the airport. This second bus was quite full and we had to squish on with all our bags. Whilst on the bus, Charlie saw out of the window a thread from a man’s trousers getting caught in the door of another bus, and as it pulled off it ripped the trousers. Ha ha. Eventually we reached the airport and the bus kulak yelled to tell us that we were at our stop. However, we spent so long squeezing out from our seats and falling onto the pavement that when it was time for us to pay, Charlie said as a joke “¿Es gratis?” Apparently the answer was yes, as the conductor just jumped back on the bus and it sped away. We ran off before the mistake was discovered.

We arrived at the airport and were glad to see it was air conditioned. However, it was turned up a little too much, and we had to keep taking turns to go and stand outside to warm up before returning inside. After a while we tried to check in, only to be told that our flight didn’t leave from the main airport. We were then directed to a small shed, where we had to take turns standing on scales to be weighed and have elastic bands put on our bag for identification. Nonetheless, we managed to check in without too much hassle.

While we were waiting for our flight, we spotted an amazing black lady getting out of a cab, followed by a kulak carrying her luggage, which consisted of about 5 matching zebra print suitcases. The lady was about 60 years old but had knee high boots on and a skirt with a massive slit up it. She had drawn on eye brows with green marker pen and was wearing a lavender hat and a wig. We decided that we liked her immediately.

Eventually it was time for our flight and we crossed the runway to our plane. It was so old it had elastic band powered propellers and looked like a bread bin (see pics). However, we soon took off and were given a polystyrene cup of own brand cola and a pack of animal biscuits. Charlie started to eat his animal biscuits and then spotted a pair of mating animals in the pack. Two bears had become fused in the oven and looked like rutting dogs. This caused much hilarity on the plane, but not as much as when Charlie put the conjoined animal biscuits on his seat tray, where the vibrations of the plane caused them to physically enact their love. People grew concerned as we laughed at the tupping animal biscuits.

After a quick landing at Bluefields to pick up some more passengers, we landed at Big Corn Island airport, which has limited security, mainly due to the fact that it has a palapa roof. Lucky it’s not a Muslim country.

The Island of Village Idiots

Having landed and claimed our luggage we headed off for the port, since we wanted to get straight over to Little Corn island, which is a 45 minute boat rise from Big Corn island. However, Lonely Planet is notorious for printing obsolete maps so after wandering around for a bit we eventually asked for some directions. At first we asked the police, who pointed us in the right direction. We then asked a security guard outside the bank, who responded to our questions with a simple “No”. Fearing we had encountered the island idiot, we asked another lady. Since this is an English speaking island, we thought it would go OK. We were wrong. At first it seemed she knew what we were talking about, but then started giving us directions for the local government building. “No,” Lisa said “where is the boat?” Unfortunately the lady had no idea what a boat was. Eventually, growing exasperated, Lisa ejaculated “A BOAT – LIKE A SHIP, BUT SMALLER!” We eventually got a muddled reply, so we left her and managed to find the port by ourselves.  

Welcome to Little Corn

The boat journey to Little Corn was promised by Lonely Planet to be a “spine cruching” 45 minute trip; it was, in fact, a serene 30 minute trip. At the beginning of the trip life jackets were given out for everyone to wear (Betty would have been pleased) but we were too embarrassed to wear them. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the trip, especially the descent from the boat when we arrived at Little Corn down some rickety old wooden steps that led directly to the beach.

The Goblin’s Glade

Having got off the boat reasonably dry, we set out to find a Lonely Planet recommended place to stay called Derricks. Although it was only meant to take 20 minutes to get there, it took us at least 45 following 2 wrong turns. Directions that say “keep going straight” are not much help when the path splits in two and neither of them are straight ahead. The path ran through the jungle and led us to many Cripsy Hands residences by mistake. We were both soaking wet with sweat from carrying our extra heavy backpacks and when we finally arrived at Derrick’s we were ready to die. When we eventually met Derrick, we were unprepared for his uncanny resemblance to Rumpelstiltskin and shocked at his excessive request of $25 for a small stick hut. “No gracias goblin!” was the reply, and tired as we were, we picked ourselves up and traipsed off down the beach in search of cheaper accommodation.

Misery Serves

After the exhausting trek in the dark we finally reached a place that wasn’t full and was only $10 for the cabaña. We flopped down sweaty but content in our new little garden terrace with hammock, chairs and a table. Our neighbours looked like annoying Europeans so we didn’t speak to them. The room was nice and had a fabulous mosquito net but the bed dipped in the middle and forced Charlie and Lisa into close confines. The cabaña was ensuite which amazed us when thinking back to Tulum. Unfortunately it turned out to be a very caribbean style ensuite as the water only ran when it was dark and there was no light in the bathroom area. Electricity was turned off at 10pm and no more water until 7pm the next night. There were great difficulties in flushing the toilet and cleaning teeth. There was a nice restaurant where we learnt to be cunning. The place was run by Voodoo Mama (Grace) but the waitress and order taker was ‘Misery’. Misery spends her entire life trying not to smile, trying to be the least helpful and to throw food on tables with the most disdainful manner. Whereas Voodoo Mama is a lovely comely human being who made us anything we asked for. We spent our time waiting for Misery to become occupied by a miserable task so we could zoom around to the kitchen door and place our order with Voodoo Mams. The only problem was that Voodoo Mams managed to camouflage herself in the dark kitchen so we had to direct our orders into oblivion. Fortunately our order was always taken on board and all other campers had to eat the same thing. Hurrah.

Happy Birthday Lisa, Lisa it’s Your Birthday

Lisa celebrated her 24th Birthday on the 17th February. She was treated to a birthday breakfast by Charlie but as usual a veggie food error was made. Lisa asked what ingredients were in the omelette and all given were veggie. When the omelette arrived ham had made it into the mix. The error was remedied and a new omelette was made and consumed within seconds. On her birthday she decided to have a birthday dive and went with another girl who had a micro-disaster. It was a long dive and Lisa was left to swim about wherever she pleased. Nurse sharks, hundreds of barracuda, porcupine fish, angel fish etc. were just some of the animals seen. The best part of the dive was at the end when the other girl got confused and had been looking at her depth gauge instead of her air gauge. She was down into the red and decided to tell Lisa instead of the instructor. Luckily we were about to surface and Lisa only just contained her giggles as the girl looked mortified. After the dive Lisa went back to find Charlie, who had bought her a small piece of chocolate cake. The rest of the day was spent sunbathing. The evening was filled with a special dinner at a place called Farm Peace and Love. Run by a very frightening Italian ´lady´, who looked and sounded very opposite to peace and love. We arrived at the house, which was near to Derrick’s, after a long walk in the dark. A giant dog confronted us as we entered, he was truly a monster. We had enforced socialisation with three other people as only one table was set. We were a little nervous but soon relaxed as we found our companions couldn’t speak English. We hoped for a nice quiet and anti-social meal but unfortunately we were soon joined by an Italian lady who could speak English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Our hopes were dashed. The other couple were from France and strangely we all tried to speak Spanish to each other. It was a very fun meal and most of the entertainment was provided by the comical faces of the Frenchman, who bore a striking resemblance to Charlie’s father (please see pictures). We finished the meal after two bottles of Italian wine between the two of us whilst the old foreign folk couldn’t finish one bottle. We were the last to leave and so Charlie cunningly poured the Granjas’ wine into our own bottle and we tripped off merrily (with hiccoughs) back home. This journey was slightly scary and certainly would have been had we not had two bottles of courage. We walked through jungle and along the beach for about 40mins in pitch blackness. The only aid we had was a wind-up torch stolen from Glynnis, our new found Norwich friend! The electric lights were on as we returned to our cabin, so we took advantage of the available shower water but after half a shower the generator went off so did Lisa’s stomach. The rich italian food and vino returned to the surface in a dramatic volcano style eruption! What an end to a perfect birthday! The following day more anti-malarials were consumed by Lisa just incase they had also returned to the surface. This led to a day of hangovers and overdosing, with a loss of limb control and spreading pins and needles.  

Bad Business

We perused the local restaurants like food critics as there was nothing else to occupy our time. We soon found an empty but expensive looking establishment called ‘Sunshine Hotel’. The building was reminiscent of a resort style hotel in Magaluf and on meeting the owner this illusion was not dispelled. The lady owner ‘Glynis’ was about as mad an English person as you could find. Glynis was a large, rotund, bimbiling woman with spidery hair and a delicious Norwich American accent. She was over confident in her newly leased, empty hotel’s success and ensured us that the island would be “rockin’” in a few years! We perused the menu and decided to eat there one night, even though Glynis’ explanation of her special vege dish was a little circumspect. It was to be a spaghetti meal with a red sauce usually served with lobster. Unfortunately the description from Glynis involved how the sauce could be used with a variety of shrimp, squid and other marine foods not to Lisa’s liking. The meal was a success and Charlie particularly enjoyed his African style chicken but it was the after dinner chat with Glynis that really made the evening. We chatted with her at the bar about her business ventures, her liking for FCUK t-shirts, her family’s achievements (working in Norwich McDonalds) and her many husbands. We decided to indulge in cocktails but Glynis had no idea of preparation so Charlie was invited to prepare them! She had already lost 50,000 pounds on a Nicaraguan property and we feel she now stands to lose a lot more. Her lack of business sense has led to an over employment of small pig-shaped kulaks, who have nothing to do. She was also trying to sell fake red roses and some luxury ones which had a pair of knickers instead of a flower! Eventually Glynis became confused but the moment could not be pin-pointed as she swung the conversation towards us having the right personality for the hospitality business. Charlie replied to the crazy lady that “we are just looking into a couple of places at the moment”. This assumption was too much for us, like we would be silly enough to own an hotel with no customers, so we left before she tried to sub-let it to us. We stole her torch for the walk back.

Storm in a Cabana

It was typical that when we move to a Caribbean island a storm moves in. Many islanders said it might last a week or more! Our stick hut certainly felt the blast of wind and rain and some of the rain even managed to drip on our heads during that night. The weather was so cold (probably less than 25 degrees centigrade), so we couldn’t face cold showers and had to remain dirty. We battened down the hatches, especially after stories of someone else’s stick hut being broken into and the occupant waking up with a knife at his throat. This story caused a little worry as we had no lock on the door. Emergency action was taken:

1. We made the front terrace look unlived in

2. We locked the door with string and knots

3. We locked the door on the outside

4. Charlie entered by the window and locked that with more string

5. We threw out a piece of asbestos

6. We locked our bags

7. We slept with one eye open

This disrupted and terrifying night of sleep led us to search for alternative accommodation. We splashed out on a hotel called the Lobster Inn at the limit of our budget, but water ran more frequently and the walls didn’t let water in.

Pink Paradise

The rest of our days on Little Corn were spent using our hotel to the full. They had rocking chairs. So we rocked endlessly from morning until night overlooking a small patch of grass on sand that reminded us of the Links at St. Andrews.Whilst rocking and watching a beautiful sun set on the horizon an old moleman granjad attacked us. He climbed the stairs and tried to socialise with us, dressed in an African explorer outfit with a camera on a stick. The strange American mole talked about his living in Nics, trying to marry a Costa Rican and the rest of his very long life story. We tried to be blunt and discourage conversation but moley kept finding us and referring to us as his English friends! This is unreciprocated friendship.

Final thoughts: Lovely, photogenic island but with very little to do. The traffic free island was amazingly unpolluted (please see pic of ‘main road’). We seem to have had our fill of beautiful Caribbean islands and are looking forward to seeing real people again.

Mark out of 10: 7.5

Next Time……….. Managua