Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The reservation at Farm Peace and Love kind of worked out. There was a lot of confusion, but we ended up being able to eat there. And after all that trouble, the food turned out to be just ok, and a bit expensive, and Paola did not eat with us the way Derek and Anna do. Everyone else said they'd be going back, but I'm happy to stick with Anna's cooking, which is much better and a few dollars cheaper.

So yeah, we've just been hanging around and living in bliss. I tried conch. (Yum.) Michael had a day where he ate lobster for both lunch and dinner. We even decided to stay an extra day. So happy and chill that there's really not much to write about. We haven't gone anywhere or seen anything or learned anything. I have basically just sat around and breathed in and out and thought about how lucky I am and how far away the bad parts of my life are now.

We're trying to decide what to do next because time is running short and we're still two and a half countries away from South America. We want to see more of Nicaragua and we want to see Costa Rica and Panama, but if we spend too much time here, we'll have to rush through South America, which we are really looking forward to.

Which is just about the best problem I've had in my entire life.

I snorkeled for the first time today. I've always wanted to do it but have had so many worries - I can't swim, for one. And my vision is pretty weak, so I didn't know if I'd be able to see with a plain mask. A couple of people have mentioned something about the refraction of light in the water making vision clearer, but I don't know.

So we rented gear from Derek today, $5 USD each. (Pretty much everyone on the island rents out snorkel gear for the same price.) I got a lifejacket as well, to help me float. Ok, snorkeling is not really the best activity for me as it combines a whole bunch of my fears into one deadly, watery combination, lacking only spiders.

I can't swim, and I'm afraid to float, and I can't get my eyes wet, so I was constantly afraid of water seeping into the mask, and I'm terrified of not being able to breathe, so when I get under the water with the snorkel, I'm huffing and puffing like a freak, and then when I start floating over the seagrass I panic and try to flail away from it and scare away all the fish.

But having said all that: snorkeling is amazing! Wow! So cool, during the rare moments when I could just relax and drift, to be in that underwater world. As I'm unable to swim out to the reef, I didn't see any of the fabulous coral and colorful fish that people go snorkeling to see, but honestly, even just seeing the sand and logs and small fish by the shore was amazing for me.

Also I saw a ray, which was very cool. Of course, just after I spotted it, my mask started to fill with water and I had to flail myself upright to empty it out and of course I scared it well away. But man, if you can swim and manage to keep calm in the water, you should go snorkeling immediately.

So... tomorrow we are going back to the Dive Shop to have them make a reservation for us on a plane from Big Corn to Managua. We wanted the trip to be all overland, but we also said we weren't doing some crazy, arbitrary stunt, and would do whatever was ultimately best for us at the time. And flying is definitely best for us right now.

It took us seven days to get to Little Corn from Managua. Part of that is our fault for not rushing, and part of it was the full moon keeping us on Big Corn, but it's still quite a trip and we'd have to retrace our steps back to Managua; there's no other choice. There's nowhere we can go from Big Corn besides Bluefields, and nowhere we can go from Bluefields besides Rama or Laguna de Perlas. Etc.

And the thought of backtracking all the way back through Bluefields, Rama, Juigalpa and Managua, even without stopping over in any of those places, makes us shudder. So we're going to fly. Tickets are $106 USD apiece (prices have gone way up since our edition of the LP came out) and the trip will take us less than two hours.

We are not looking forward to leaving. Little Corn Island is an amazing place. The only really bad thing was the mouse dropping. I found a mouse dropping in my empanada at a small eatery in town. Michael tried to convince me it was something else, but I had three pet mice as a kid; I know from mouse droppings. I also have a collection of at least forty different types of spices at home and none of them looks like mouse droppings, not even corriander.

Michael broke the item in question apart with a toothpick and said, "it's can't be, look, there's a tiny seed in it." Which seems about as silly to me as saying "that can't be human feces, there's corn in it." He was just trying to be nice and keep me from getting upset, but there was no way I was eating the rest of the empananda. The discovery was a real benefit to the stray kitten winding around my feet, so it wasn't a total loss.

A small price to pay, I guess, for this amazing experience.

 

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Pineapples grow along the paths of Little Corn.

Beach, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua.

We went around those rocks on the sea side... and should probably have taken the forest path.