Wow! Another month goes by without a blog post! Where does the time go?? I'm working so hard that the weeks just fly by...
It's not all work, work, work here of course. Occasionally we get some time off to ourselves... so when blueEnergy shut down for Semana Santa (Holy Week), I took off for a week's trip to the Corn Islands. These two tiny specks of sand lie about 70 miles off shore from Bluefields and pretty much correspond to the typical Carribean island stereotype: warm blue water, coral reefs, white sand, palm trees, laid-back people and lots of reggae music. Whilst Bluefields (to me at least) definitely feels like a Latin American town, the vibe on the Corn Islands is 100% Caribbean. English (well, Caribbean English) is the language of communication and Bob Marley tunes ring out from every bar. People say that the Corn Islands represent an older, less commercialized Caribbean as it was on more famous islands such as Jamaica 50 years ago, before the advent of mass tourism and giant cruise ships. Little Corn, the smaller of the two islands, is particularly sleepy. It's only 1.5km long by a few hundred metres wide, and there are no roads, just a small network of interconnected concrete paths that link the hotels, bars, the two dive shops and the village.
Of course the real reason I went there was for the diving. To tell the truth, the diving is kinda OK but not spectacular. Like most of the diving I've done in the Caribbean, there just don't seem to be many fish. Coral is in reasonable condition though, visibility is generally pretty good and it's WARM! There are supposedly frequent sightings of hammerhead sharks at a channel off the east coast of Little Corn, but I didn't see any. I did see quite a few eagle rays, big stingrays, a few nurse sharks and lots of lobsters.
Anyway, for now I'll leave you with a few photos, including a shot of the view from Casa Iguana, probably the nicest place to stay on Little Corn. I, of course, stayed in one of the cheap places down on the beach :-)
Cheers,
Phil
