Semana Santa is hardly the holy week that its namesake translates to. During this holiday break, meant to commemorate the death of their savior, people flood to the beaches to drink, party, soak up the sun, and engage in reckless activities often at the cost of lives. Along with two other interns, Kara from Brooklyn and Karen from Canada, I chose to take my week long vacation in the less populated and Caribbean coast in hopes of a scene that was more
tranquilo. In the end, we did in fact get that, but we had to go through our share of chaos and near death (by sea) to reach our paradise.
Getting there was an arduous yet adventurous journey including an array of different transportation mediums. Chicken Bus, Micro Bus, Panga, Taxi, Boat, Mini plane. Masaya to Managua on microbus, Managua to El Rama on overnight bus that left at 9 pm and got to El Rama at 2 in the morning where we had a 3 hour layover in the middle of the night outside on a bench waiting for the first
panga to leave at 5 am to go down the entire length of the Rio Escondido, get to Bluefields, take another panga to a town called C-------, miss the bus going to Pearl Lagoon because it decided to leave a half hour early, take a taxi to Pearl Lagoon, another panga to and from the village of Awas, and finally a night's rest back in Pearl Lagoon.
It is quite hard to still feel like one is in Nicaragua on the Atlantic Coast. The spoken language was English and the vibe was very west indie. It was such a stark contrast to the Spanish speaking, traditional catholic Latin American ways of the rest of the country. On the Atlantic coast, we ate Coconut Bread in place of tortillas and listened to more reggae than salsa or marimba. For an area so geographically isolated from the rest of the country, it has a unique mesh of different cultures including Mestizos, Creoles, Garifunas, and different Amerindian tribes. Most people are bilingual in English and Spanish and some people speak an additional language that is indigenous to their tribe. When conversing with locals, their heavily accented English was so difficult to understand and we had to switch to Spanish to understand what was going on. In Awas, we met one man who spoke 5 different languages- Mestizo, Creole, Suma, English and Spanish. The contras snatched him from his parents when he was sixteen and he proceeded to fight in the counter revolution of a country he barely associates with. From Pearl Lagoon, we went to a village called Oronoco. Oronoco is the home to a population of Garifuna people, a group with West African roots indigenous to areas in Belize. Karen also seems to think that it is the namesake of that Enya song that goes "sail away sail away sail away", because its actual title is "Oronoco". For years, their Garifuna language and culture was suppressed in Oronoco. Now there is a revival movement that includes teaching Garifuna in schools and reviving traditional Garifuna music and dance. The Garifuna music I experienced was the percussion and voices of a group of young men bringing the vibrant and passionate Afro-Caribbean beats of their ancestors to life. Our new friends took us to the homes of two women, one who sold us cassava bread, and the other who sold us a homemade moonshine comprised mostly of corn and sugar.
After a night in Oronoco, we headed back to Bluefields hoping to catch a ferry to the Corn Islands. What we didn’t know was that there are only ferries to the corn islands on certain days, so we had to stay in Bluefields for a night. Despite the guidebook’s warnings of Bluefields as a dangerous crack ridden city, the girls and I liked Bluefields, and its feeling of a true city. There was a central park, two story buildings (very rare in this country), and a feeling of laid back kind of hustle, but a bustle nonetheless. Something about the city’s raw Creole vivaciousness with its scene of dark and sinful pleasures, made me think of New Orleans (though I have never been, only heard). The hostel we chose, however, did embody all of the stereotypes and warnings. There was a single dark hallway with tiny rooms. Our room had no windows to the outside, but a window that overlooked the dark creepy hallway. The owner of the place was an old man who hobbled around on crutches because of an ailment that left him with a completely skinless, raw underside of one foot and the absence of one toe. My diagnosis is that some weird parasite was eating away at his flesh. Besides its “bargain value and convenient location” The Moon Nicaragua Guide failed to say that one should only go there if they intend to evoke feelings of a Caribbean version of the Shining. To avoid the hostel, we walked around the city all day and even tried our luck at a Casino, where I won just enough to buy us girls a healthy handle of Flor de Cana for the next day’s journey to Little Corn Island.
We had grand plans for the six hour boat ride from Bluefields to Little Corn. It would consist of sunshine, Caribbean ocean Breeze, rum, and deck tanning. In actuality, it was overcrowded, uncomfortable, and by the end, drenched in vomit, saltwater, and sick people laying in all of it. One crew member’s job was to hand out barf bags and collect used ones. Everyone in the inside area had their heads in their laps. Outside on the deck, people were lying down, heads overboard, as waves continually and violently crashed on them. In my corner of a bench squashed between two helplessly immobilized grown men, my stomach endlessly churned as a layer of saltwater slowly accumulated on my face, burning my eyes, and forcing them shut. After witnessing a mother throw up all over her daughter who was already lying down in her own spew, I decided to just keep my eyes closed for the rest of the ride. Together, the girls and I have come to terms with the trauma we underwent. We have acknowledged the impossibility to convey to others the dreadfulness of the experience, and can only look back and laugh at our initial preconceptions.
We finally reached Big Corn, where after all that, we had to take another 45 minute Panga ride to little Corn. And now for the happy ending. It seems almost inappropriate to talk about the rest of the trip in the same post. White sands, turquoise waters, waking up hearing the waves, eating fresh seafood and all day everyday, wearing bathing suits not clothes, coconut bread, Flor de Cana, reggae, vast beaches with no one else on them. It was pretty much that for the next 5 days...On the way back, we paid for a flight in a tiny plane that flew directly from big corn to Managua.
Freaky Warrior.
