Slow Boat to Bluefields

I wanted to see a bit more of Central America this time as I rode back North, rather than just "blasting through" like I seem to have done on a couple of occasions in the past!

So, I was taking the self created opportunity of Scuba Diving as a means to that end :)
And so, as I rode North from San Juan Del Sur in the very South of Nicaragua leaving Greg to explore his own route back to Canada, I headed first to Granada... But, after the hour and a half of riding, I didnt stop there... I continued North a bit and then rode East for a further three and a half hours.
And given the size of Nicaragua, that was equivalent to riding pretty much either the full length or breadth of the country! But, more importantly, it put me in "The town at the end of the road" called Rama.

And that meant I had completed the first of four legs of a "multi-mode surface transport medley" that would eventually get me to "Little Corn Island" out in the Caribbean. Apparently there is nice Scuba Diving there, somewhat like at Utila in Honduras but apparently its a more "tranquil" atmosphere... And so it should be! given the difficulty of access...
Actually, you can get there without quite so much "trauma" by flying out directly from Managua... But that would be "cheating" for a motorbike adventure-tour!
... Well I thought so anyway :)

So, first leg of the journey for me was to ride three and a half hours into the middle of nowhere... It used to be a lot longer too, but as with many of the access routes in this part of the world, what was just a few years ago an arduous and slow journey on a rough dirt road is now a relatively easy drive on a very nice paved highway (progress!)
And so I found myself at the end of a days riding "holed up" in a little hotel in Rama; A classic little "frontier" town quite like Turbo that I wrote about in Colombia.







Streets of Rama

Next morning, I left the bike at the hotel and carried just my top-box with clothes etc in it down to the dock on the river. There I purchased a ticket for an all day ride on "the slow boat to Bluefields".

The "Big boat" at the town dock

And indeed, it took pretty much all of the next day to go down the broad brown river on the big boat (with about 50 other local passengers) to get to the quite large but accessible only by air or water, town of Bluefields... Located two thirds of the way down Nicaragua's Caribbean coast.
There was pretty much nothing to see on the way down the river except the broad brown river and the badly molested jungle with the ever constant plantations of bananas, palms, and sugar cane.

Sharing the boat deck with a "fighting cock"...
No problem for me... I told him "Hey man, Im a lover not a fighter!" :)

Cargo on the front deck of the boat

Morning rain today :)









Other river travellers



A house along the river bank

Passengers on the boat deck

Not so much fight in him toward the end of the day.

The highlight (or rather low-light for me) was the "last scene" of a gruesome little show, played out for us as we motored slowly by down the river...
It was a local man in a canoe paddling in pursuit of a small wild dear that had been scared into trying to escape the man and his four hunting dogs by swimming the 200m wide river... The man in the canoe "won" the race and he clubbed the dear unconscious in the river to the cheers of all the other Nicaraguans on our big boat...
The hunter was undoubtedly just feeding himself and his family, and he was using pretty basic techniques (no traps or guns), but it all just made me feel sad, and even more so that there was absolutely no-one else on the boat other than me that was on the side of the deer :((

Hunting dog in "pursuit"!

The man and the little deer.

... Scene fades out ...

... But the boat motored on and after the allotted five hours or so, we arrived in Bluefields.
Second leg of the medley completed!



Glassy water with boat wake.

Decommissioned fishing boats.







... And once there, I found myself "holed up" yet again in another dingy little hotel in Bluefields which is yet another of these "frontier" towns that Im now becoming quite familiar with :)

Cargo.

Cargo



The streets of Bluefields.

These towns have a very distinctive "flavour" to them that Im beginning to quite like (Though quite why I couldnt say!) and that Ill try to describe in the next post...
But back to my medley...

So, I spent another sweaty uncomfortable night in a musty little room in the market district of another grotty little town!
... What can I say, but "Its all Self Inflicted" :))

And the next morning I got myself down to the town dock again with a stop along the way to purchase a couple of "motion sickness" tablets from the little pharmacy in preparation for the crossing of "open water"...

And then I got on that same "slow boat" but this time there were about two hundred other people on the boat (and lots more cargo too)... just enough seating for everyone, but certainly not enough for you to change place if you were on the sunny side and wanted shade, or if it started raining (which sooner or later it always does down here).... and we were all bound for another five hour ride across open sea to the Corn Islands...

It was a tedious trip I must say, and it did indeed eventually start raining; and then there were a bunch of damp people standing around looking mildly uncomfortable but not really cold :).
Fortunately that happened when we were almost at our destination so the discomfort did not last...
Third leg of the journey completed!

And then I was on another dock in the sweltering heat and bright sun and trying to figure out how to complete the last leg of my journey...
It turned out that I had to just sit around and wait for a couple of hours before the next "Panga" (large launch) headed over to the "Little Corn Island" which I could see nearby just about 10Km over the water.

So, I walked about a bit, and had a bit of a look-see at what I could while I was there...
But the big island settlement seemed very "diffused" and I barley managed to find a place to buy a bag of chips and a drink let alone an urban centre!
... Not that much goin' on round here I can tell ya :))

The local swamp on Big Corn Island :)

In due course, the launch for the small island was loaded up in haphazard fashion and the passengers were loaded in too and life vests were handed around. Then the big launch headed off for the short hop between the islands powered by the two big "super smooth and quiet" 200hp outboards. I was in a spot near the back of the boat so the ride was not too bad but if you were at the front, well, lets just say that in that case, the best use for the life jacket was for sitting on to cushion the hard landings on the bench seats as you repeatedly slammed down over every wave! But the plumes of spray that the boat sent up into the bright sunlight were quite beautiful and I spent the half hour crossing quietly mesmerized by the spray :)
And then, yet again, I found myself standing on a dock in the sun.... The setting sun this time though.







Arrived at last... Little Corn Island.

And so I had completed my "surface transport medley" and I have to say it was rather arduous...
I hope the scuba diving is nice cos' when Im done with it Im just gonna have to repeat all these transport "hurdles"one more time in reverse!