Misadventure on the High Seas

(Nicaragua, 2014)

Bluefields sneaks up on you. The centuries old pirate town lacks any apparent evidence of its antiquity, having been blown away rather unkindly by an hurricane in 1988; old Victorian wooden houses were replaced with safer but less characterful concrete structures. Approaching on a bouncing panga, excitedly leaving the surface of the water and attempting to shatter one's spine as its reconnects with it, the city seems to go from distant smudge to an obscuring shoreline in a matter of moment. Once you dock at Bluefield's jetties, you can't see the concrete for the blocks.

Nor is there a particularly obvious route from the jetty to the main part of town; perhaps we just didn't find it. Instead we found ourselves wandering down ramshackle alleys with huge pot holes and strange leaning bits of corrugated ironlike a cheap backdrop for a play set in Ankh-Morpork. Eventually we emerged, blinking, onto the sunlit main street, and finally saw Bluefields properly. Unlike the gentility of Granada, or the workaday bustle of Juigalpa, Bluefields is a generic backdrop for one of those period movies where someone arrives at an exotic port. Somehow, the three crates of humorously chirping chicks had beaten us to the main road and were providing a comedy aural backdrop to the swirl of people, the flash of tuk-tuks and the gleam of sunshine on rainy pavements.  Bluefields is where Spanish Nicaragua and the English Miskito Coast blend together, with reggae music playing from shops with Spanish advertising on them. The same red-shirted Claro salespeople stand on every corner, just like everywhere else, but here they are watched by elderly Caribbean people sitting in rocking chairs on balconies, and passed by tiny ladies in giant hats. 

It also, it must be said, has a definite edge that we hadn't picked up in the other towns and cities.  Staring is a popular Nicaraguan pastime that takes a little while to get used to, but in most cases you soon realise that there is no menace or insolence intended, merely passive curiosity. Bluefields is mostly the same, but every now and again I got a strange feeling of being noticed with a bit more active interest. I was quite glad to get to the excellent, cheap and clean Hostal Doña Vero near the town square and drop my ludicrously enormous backpack and hide my camera bag.

Away from the docks, Bluefields is more like other Nicaraguan towns, built on a grid around a pleasant central square, where the locals resolutely refuse to play chess at the special tables with chess boards painted on them. The 1988 storm had leached the town of its architectural character, however and, having been stared at a little bit more and invested too much time trying to find Bluefields' only Mexican restaurant, we gave in to the rhythm of our recent travels and had an early night, ready to resume our quest in the morning.

In the morning I got some much needed exercise with a high-speed search for a cajeros automatico, running from street to street all over the town until I finally found an ATM.  Misleadingly, the town is covered is signs reading "Banco" that turn out merely to belong to a convenience store, and to suggest that the shop takes Visa or Mastercard. By the time I managed to get some precious dollars to last us through our ATMless time further north, we'd missed our intended boat. Instead, we decided to have a daytime investigation of Bluefield's busy coastal strip and to plot our next move.

In Juigalpa we were obviously the only gringos in town, and given its far remove from the tourist trail that made sense. It was increasingly obvious in Bluefields that we were almost as much of a novelty, which made a great deal less sense given the town's central position as a gateway to the attractions of the Caribbean coast. There must have been other tourists, tucked away out of sight, but clearly not many. That meant that wherever we walked we got a certain amount of attention. As we wondered onto the jetty, a local gentleman attached himself to us, desperate to help us so much he started translating our English into English for the local English speakers, which was awfully nice of him. He did show us where to go to book our tickets for a panga to Pearl Lagoon, but all his efforts couldn't persuade anyone to make any kind of guess at an ETD. Being wise to the ways of local transport by now, Michelle and I looked at the half empty boat and made a wild guess that it would be almost an hour before it finally found enough passengers to depart.

As we picked a recommended bakery from the guidebook, our next helpful friend decided to guide us to the place we had already located on a map. Still, he deserved some credit for actually taking us there, rather than trying to guide us to a) a rival bakery or b) an armed robbery. And it was very nice to know that I could get coke. In the absence of Irn Bru I do like a bit of coke. Fortunately Michelle pointed out that it probably wasn't that sort of coke, and we hurried on.

When we arrived back the port with my bag hanging off me as if I was giving a really fat green man a piggy back, our first friend announced that we had taken too long. Our panga had departed, and we would have to wait until tomorrow! Surely there are other ways to get there, we countered - I understand that we can go to Kukra Hill and get a bus, no? First Friend paused, then nodded and agreed, but looked as though he was very unhappy to do so.

We never discovered what his game was, because when we returned to the jetty the rather languid woman on the booking desk was most perplexed at our assumption of having missed our boat, and ushered us quickly on to the panga, which was in fact plainly still there and not even full.  Here the locals were just as irritated by the customs of Nicaraguan transport as we were, and we listened for a while to a melody of Caribbean accents each bemoaning the fact that they were stuck on a boat waiting for one more person to fill it. In the end, no one could find a 13th passenger who wanted to go to Pearl Lagoon, so rather than wait until the 12 other passengers rose up in arms and killed the driver,  a man wanting to go halfway to Kukra was added, satisfying both the angry mob and the driver's honour (and possibly his kidneys).

(Kukra Hill, incidentally, was a delightful looking pace with a beautifully painted multi-coloured bridge and two wooden carts with reggae playing and seemingly nothing else. I rather wished I was getting off there)

Pearl Lagoon has a slightly less prepossessing jetty, but as you head north from it, its gentle collection of waterside houses have plenty of charm. We were booked to stay at Casa Ulrich, recommended to Michelle via some ex-pat Canadians she'd found on t'internet (she does things like that). Casa Ulrich turned out to be a charming double building, with rooms set a little back from the water in one block, and a restaurant overlooking the lagoon itself in another. The place is run by Fred Ulrich, a well-travelled Pearl Lagoonian chef with experience in the US and Europe, and who runs a tight ship - not something that can be said of all his relatives.

Before we'd even arrived, a local man appeared at our side and started chatting to Michelle. It turned out that the man, Johnny, was Fred's cousin, and he politely accompanied us on our way through the quiet, beporched northern street of Pearl Lagoon until we reached the Casa. After we had checked into to our very satisfactory rooms and had a quick cool down under the aircon, Johnny proceeded to introduce us to various members of his family. Charmed by his general helpfulness, I decided to share our plan with him, to see whether he thought I was crazy or not.

Well, you can see why we wanted to go there.

So, I asked him. If I was to charter a boat to the Pearl Cays, and then straight onto the Corn Islands, would that be possible? And where would we find someone to take us?

We had underestimated Johnny's helpfulness. Not only did he assure us that it was possible, he gave us a short lecture on the size of engine and how it would relate to the price we would be charged. We didn't need a 75, apparently, and a 40 would be more than sufficient to get us to our destination, and - amazing! - he knew someone with such a boat and he would dash off there and then to procure a quote! I had an immediate, nasty feeling that everything had suddenly got away from me, but - I reasoned - surely it was worth seeing what kind of offer Johnny could rustle up? We retreated to Fred's restaurant and enjoyed a bottle of Toña, Nicaragua's surprisingly pleasant local beer.

When Johnny returned, he was the bearer of good news! Yes, he could find a boat. With the smaller engine size, the trip would cost $400.  From the research we'd done, this was the very low end of the price range for a trip like this, and from that point of view a very good deal. Johnny, though a little socially awkward, was clearly genuinely connected to the very well run family business of the Ulriches, and none of them seemed particularly skeptical of or concerned by him offering their guests impromptu tours.

Perhaps they had never seen his friend's boat.

So it was, dear reader, that we said yes. 

The plan was that we would arise early - again - with a view to setting off around 7am. We awoke to a beautiful morning, with a gentle dawn zephyr barely stirring the surface of the silty lagoon.  Perfect weather, we reasoned, stuffing our luggage dutifully into enormous orange rubbish sacks to protect out precious luggage from the evils of salt water (a vain hope, as it transpired). We paid Johnny most of his money, as it needed to be spent almost entirely on petrol, keeping back 15% just in case.

An hour and a half later, after breakfast, worry and Fred Jnr having to get on his bike to hunt down his missing cousin, Johnny and his driver appeared in a rather unglamorous, peeling panga that once may have been a fetching shade of baby blue but now had the general distressed air of a pair of decorator's jeans. It wasn't a small boat, exactly, but it seemed a touch more diminutive than the pangas that we had seen on our travels. On the other hand, those boats were mass transit vehicles: perhaps their size was entirely about passenger capacity and not about stability.

By the time we set off, sadly, the zephyr had upgraded to a stiff breeze.  It didn't take long for the calm waters of the sheltered lagoon to turn wavy as we ventured out into the Caribbean. The grey waves beat relentlessly onto the boat, but our hosts - Johnny, the driver and a friend of theirs who had tagged along for a free ride to the Corns - assured us further from the coast the seas would be calmer.

The good thing about pangas, as opposed to other small boats, is that their speed makes most of the action of the boat up and down, rather than side to side. The spine-jarring smackdown as the boat leaves the water is the threat to the passenger, with sea-sickness possible but mitigated by the lack of sway, though I'd developed a headache by the time the boat entered the calmer waters around the Cays.

Road to Nowhere: Lime Cays jetty

Having set off the best part of two hours late, our actual tour of the Cays was a little perfunctory. Our first stop was Lime Cay, one of the larger islands and one where a permanent resident is installed to keep an eye on things. He was clearly very happy to see Johnny and co, and they retreated to a small pink house to catch up while leaving us to poke around our introductory Cay, which seemed to have more coconut shells than sand, though you can apparently stay in a very nice house there for a measly $6,000 a week (excluding alcohol).

Eventually Johnny & Co rescued us from photographing coconuts and chickens and we finally got a boat ride to a paradise island.

If the first part of the journey had been frustrating and underwhelming, this middle part was where the goodies were. Immediately, the hyperbole in the guide books was justified. These smaller Cays are the sort of place that has you using words like "quintessential" - you'd need a graphic designer to tell you all the shades of blue and green in the utterly gorgeous waters (fortunately, I had one), white sand that you want to sprinkle on your Weetabix, and even orange-coloured palm trees (just to get really silly). Lurking through those ostentatiously coloured trees was always the occasional mild annoyance - in the first island's case a private island getaway that you could never completely ignore and made you feel like you were visiting someone's (very nice) garden. We were told that all the Cays had private owners, and that many were being built on, much to the annoyance of the locals. Access, however, was still possible, and the only reason we couldn't linger longer was entirely our own fault. Corn Islands were a long way away and we needed to get there before dark. As it turned out, our hosts' haste was fortuitous.

We had time for one more stop, a Cay with a classic, curved beach with a wall of bright green palms and a tiny, shell-strewn fishing hut at one end. I was feeling so chipper at this point that I tucked into some cereal bars I'd brought and thought that this boat business wasn't all that bad after all.

Just when the idyllic setting was beginning to pall (solely due to the early afternoon sun which, on this particular island, was a bit hard to escape), Johnny & Co rounded us up for the Big Trip.

The Final Cay

The sea seemed calm, but the Cays often have their own natural defences, submerged reefs (probably once Cays themselves - Pearl is vulnerable to rising sea levels, and J&C showed us a few that were mere shadows under water with a single, desperate tree clinging to life on a tiny, upthrust mound) that break the waves and keep the Cayshore clear of currents. So it was with a misplaced sense of confidence that Michelle and I embarked on the final leg of our panga voyage.

 By time we reached the final Cay, I was already reaching the limits of my endurance. As we skimmed past close to the string of fishermen's huts that are pretty much all there is of Skull Island (officially Isla Seal, but check out the spooky satellite image) I was desperate for J&C to stop the panga and let me lie down. Eventually, I realised this wasn't going to happen. I groaned and tried to focus on not being sick.

Skull Island

I should probably have spent a little more time perusing the map before we set off. Skull Island might be the furthest out of the Cays, but the open ocean between it and Little Corn is more than the distance we had already island hopped from Pearl Lagoon. It soon became apparent that the rough panga ride we'd got on the way to Cays was nothing compared to what the Caribbean was prepared to throw at us. What made that worse is that nothing really looked that bad. The sky was mostly clear and blue, the sea a rich sapphire, the wind gentle. Our panga, however, was made for millponds, and any wave bigger than a couple of feet tended to induce the aforementioned smackdown. It didn't take long before we were falling out of our seats as the boat plummeted into wave valleys, reconnecting painfully with the benches as we hit bottom.

Now dreadfully seasick, I closed my eyes and wished for it all to stop. I may well have overdone it.

Going up and down might have pushed me to the edge, but stopping was even worse. This may have been for two reasons: firstly, as soon as a panga loses speed, it becomes horribly vulnerable to the swell and sway of the water, tossed about like half a coconut shell, but secondly simply because it's not supposed to come to a halt on the open sea, and if it does then something has gone rather awry. The sound of a spluttering engine when there's no land in sight on any horizon is a terrifying one.

At first that terror was tempered by moments of hope as the engine coughed back into life and the boat limped arthritically in the direction one hoped was Little Corn. As the ratio between stops and goes grew more imbalanced, though, a slow feeling of dread developed. In my case, it was battling for attention with what was now a quite overpowering seasickness. Needless to say, I was regretting the cereal bars, the boat ride, getting up that morning and, frankly, being born.

We might have been more reassured if J&C had been a bit calmer, but they were just as worried as us. Their knowledge of how the engine worked was sufficient for them to declare that the sparkplugs needed replacing, but sadly hadn't led them to the precaution of packing spare parts. We were, basically, stranded.

And so we bobbed, bobbed and bobbed again, the boat wobbling about on the wave tops like a spinning plate in need of a push. The sun steadily sauntered towards the horizon, which remained resolutely empty of smudgy promises of land. Michelle was drawing on remarkable reservoirs of strength and was keeping it completely together, though she later confessed to have been scanning the waters for shark fins. She looked after me sweetly, as my seasickness grew to such a level that I was barely conscious of what was going on around me.

The one encouraging factor, as the engine died completely and ruled out even a tiny burst of progress, was that we were clearly drifting somewhere. After a long while, with the sky beginning to change colour as the sun dipped ever further towards its edge, a dark smudge appeared: Little Corn Island.

Our future seemed a secure as this Cay's

Now, the horizon is generally about 3 miles away. I wouldn't fancy swimming that but it would be theoretically possible. Sadly, both Corn Islands are topped with hills, which meant there was no guarantee that we were any closer than 30 miles, ruling out a bit of self-propelled splashing saving us. We sat tight (well, I hung over the edge of the boat with my eyes tightly shut trying not to heave my internal organs overboard), hoping the drift would speed up. The light began to dim.

As the sun turned orange, and the horizon behind us grew shadowy, we heard a sound that might have annoyed us in the quiet coach on a British train, but here was certainly the most delightful sound I had ever heard. It took a moment for my delirious brain to process its significance, but once it did, the bleeping of Johnny's mobile phone might as well have been a celestial choir of angels. We had drifted into range of Little Corn's mobile network!

From then on it was a race against the clock. Although Johnny could now work out our coordinates and pass them onto his friends on Corn, it would be so much safer to conduct the rescue in daylight. Some haggling was necessary to even get his friend to come out on the sea at that time of night - fortunately, whatever was promised (I couldn't quite follow the rapid-fire creole) eventually proved sufficient, and we were told to relax and wait for the cavalry.

The cavalry, when it came, was in the form of a second panga and a spark plug. We spotted the boat some time before it got to us, emerging out of the gloom after the sound of its engine has reached us. Eventually it drew alongside, its pilot throwing a bag with the sparkplugs to Johnny and collecting one of our company who had decided that he'd had enough of Johnny's half-arsed captaincy. This minor mutiny concluded, the friend took off ahead of us, while Johnny scrabbled away at the engine to get the new plug in place. Finally, as night jostled with dusk, we drew up on the sands of Little Corn Island, at which point I miraculously recovered. Seasickness is odd.

I momentarily considered withholding Johnny's final payment, but in the end confined my revenge to patronising him with my land-lubber's advice to pack some spare engine parts next time. A gaggle of locals emerged, all keen to guide us to accommodation and, we hoped, safety at last.

Night fell before we'd even left the beach, but it no longer mattered. I defiantly muttered that I'd never step foot in a boat again, until Michelle reminded me that there was no other way off Little Corn. Still, I could worry about that later. For the moment, we were safe and sound.








   

An Unexpected Journey on the isthmus.

It was supposed to be a complicated trip. Our cheap flights were already rerouting us through two regional capitals, so in a sense we were only slightly inconvenienced by a transport meltdown that saw us driven through four countries, but that's putting an awfully positive spin on things.

The smoking cone of San Miguel: Destroyer of Travel Plans

Everything had been going as smoothly as these things ever go. We'd played runaround with the airport counters ("If you queue here it will take ages to drop your bags, you'd be better off waiting for some of the other desks to open at 5am" "Which ones?" "I don't know"), I'd enjoyed becoming a seat sandwich after it transpired that my seat didn't recline, but the one in front of me very much did, the Iberia flight attendants managed to make me feel that ordering a G&T was in some way deliciously naughty (slipping the Blue Sapphire bottle to me when no-one was looking) and watched the entirety of Cloud Atlas (I say the entirety, because we very nearly gave up at several points) on my iPad to avoid the airline entertainment: Elf, on loop for 12 hours, on a TV stapled to the ceiling.

Given that a kind stranger had allowed himself to be moved so that my Esteemed Travelling Companion Michelle and I could be rehoused in reclining seats, all was well until we approved Guatemala. It was a stopping flight, the same flight number intended to proceed to San Salvador. There was something in the frantic last minute instructions to collect our hold luggage, just as we were queuing up to exit the plane for a 90 minute break, that suggested that the aircrew were working with soe very last minute information. Unfortunately, they chose not to reveal what that was.

Being a monolingual anglophone (I do try, but my current Spanish-learning strategy is to use the fun but perhaps not entirely tourist-targeted "Cat Spanish" app, so I can ask where the fish is and say the dog is stupid, but can't ask "why am I standing with my luggage in the street when I should be on a plane?"), I feel slightly cosseted by the international convention of English as the lingua franca of the skies. However, like the Albatross, eventually one must land, and suddenly realise that one is poorly adapted for this new environment. Iberia may have many English speaking staff on their flight crews. Their ground reps, however, are just as linguistically limited as I am*.

It was some time, in which we learned that queuing as a concept does not really exist in Meso-America, before we realised that having collected our bags and cleared customs, that we were slowly being ushered out of the airport. Reassured slightly by the familiar faces of our fellow flyers, we milled out into the airport approach road. Helpful hispanophones managed to communicate to us that we needed to get a bus, but for all we knew it was going to take us to another terminal. Only after waiting so long that our scheduled departure was 20 minutes away did we realise something was up, and only when the bus arrived did we manage to work out - by patient studying of gestures - what was going on.

Volcan San Miguel, a 37-years quiescent cone in the east of El Salvador, had chosen that afternoon to wake up and vomitar ash several kilometres into the sky. It was a shortlived eruption, but enough to ground all flights from San Salvador. Our journey was, basically, a bit buggered.

Which is not to say that we truly understood the actions of Iberia. True, we had boarded their flight with the intention of reaching El Salvador, therefore being put on a bus and transported there was a way for the airline to fulfil their duties. However, that also meant they were transporting us all to the one airport in the region that wasn't working. Had they left us in Guatemala, surely it was more likely that they could arrange alternative flights.

To make matters worse, by the time we driven for five hours through Gautemala City, the surrounding countryside, patiently filed through the border controls and on to San Salvador, the airport was not only disfunctional but noticeably shut. The security staff let us use the toilets and charge our phones, and their armed presence was reassuring, but it wasn't so far from being dumped in the street at 1am and told to sleep there until dawn.   

Travel Iberia in comfort!

 Throughout the night, various plans were hatched. We could pay the bus driver to take us on to Nicaragua. Then we couldn't. We could get a taxi for only $90. Then we couldn't. There was a mini-bus that could take us. Then it couldn't. Eventually the dawn came, and we discovered that we would have another 14 hour wait for a flight. Sit all day in the airport, or take a chance.

Latching on to Juan, a Spaniard also heading for Managua (who was also the kind stranger from the plane), we hit the taxi rank. There were a few startled looks from the Salvadorian drivers when we stated our destination, but a few whispers later were were offered $150 each. Hoping the travel insurance would cover that, we accepted, confident that a car could over the 300 miles to Managua faster than an aircraft that wouldn't be going anywhere for most of the day.

It turned out we were right, but by less of a margin that we had hoped.  The main road through El Salvador is in very good condition, but it's just a two lane road, and for all the stretches where our driver, sporting a borrowed ute with our bags tarpaulined in the back, was able to rattle along at 100kph, there were times when we were stuck behind, variously, an old bus, a motorbike with several people on it, or a donkey and cart. The border crossings were also interminable, though our Hispanophone friend at least made them less stress filled that might have been the case. Our driver was sweating and nervous at each crossing, which in turn made us edgy, but we preceded through several border checks before we hit a snag.

The Honduran highway feels like a neglected cousin of those around it, its roughness reflecting the scraggy terrain of the pacific coast of Honduras, but its border staff were helpful enough. At one point they filed us through a cage, giving us the impression were about to be handed our orange overalls to prepare for incarceration, but Juan was able to handle any questions about our bizarre voyage without too much trouble. The Hondurans were fond of passport stamps, customs forms and receipts. The Salvadorians let us through through entire country with nothing but a cursory glance at our documents: there is no evidence we were ever there.

The Nicaraguan border at El Gausaule is a (comparatively) plush affair, with trees and gardens and a small boy who (for some reason) "refreshes" your car tyres with a squirty thing. Regrettably, like Bill the pony at the gates of Moria, it was here our trusty steed deserted us. The Nicaraguan authorities, for reasons we still don't entirely understand, took exception to our driver and barred his entry. The driver, in turn, then insisted that he get his full fee, and was most crestfallen to be asked to take a cut, and we departed on less than amicable terms, but we now had to hire another taxi at great cost, or take a bus that would almost certainly reach Managua after our rescheduled flight, rendering our whole journey entirely redundant. We did explore the bus station, but the small boys standing around holding broken plastic guns and staring at us were discomfiting, and we slunk back to the patch of gravel that seemed to serve as the official taxi rank.

$110 dollars later, we were on the road again. The driver, despite claims to the contrary, was unable to supply a receipt official enough to satisfy insurance, and had to borrow one from his friend in a local restaurant.  I look forward to discussing this with my insurers when they ask why my taxi receipt has a picture of a roast chicken on it.

The Nicaraguan road, briefly, led us to despair. It was so potholed that for a first mile or so I thought Nicaragua's brush with the British Empire had led to them driving on the left, so often did the taxi take evasive action on that side of the road, but once it levelled off normal service was resumed.

According to Lonely Planet's map, Managua is 47 kilometres from the border as the crow flies. Sadly, Lonely Planet maps have long come with all the accuracy of a six-year-old's crayon drawing of a human face, and the actual road distance turned out to be 186km, a difference not explained by the occasional wiggle on the road or volcano avoiding reroute.  So the last phase of our voyage dragged on, and on, with the prospect of losing our race with the airline a distinct possibility. Our impromptu interpreter, Juan, was staying in Managua itself, so we entered the congested streets of the capital to enjoy the view of bright shiny orange Christmas trees, flashing elves and prostitutes, finally abandoning Juan and - it turned out - our driver in a shopping mall. Juan kindly gave us a bottle of wine in thanks for helping him escape El Salvador. We still haven't drunk it.

Our final driver, Bayardo, ploughed the journey to the city of Granada with great aplomb, and very kindly didn't hold us at knife point until we gave him all our money (apparently a hobby of Managuan drivers).  As we slumped gratefully in our hotel, we calculated that we had beaten the plane by about three hours, and - cumulatively - been on 420 miles of road for 18 hours. Worth every cent. 

* though they may not know how to say "quiero vomitar" in English.