Day 14 - Little Corn Island

As usual, I woke up early and took a walk along long bay. The Moon guide book had mentioned a pyramid (actually the corner of a cube buried in the earth) supposedly located on top of Quinn hill that is supposedly one of 8 spots in the world where the vertices of a cube intercepts the land surface of the earth. (see http://www.souloftheworld.com/) I decided to look for it and followed the road up the hill. There are no houses in the area and it's completely deserted. I couldn't find a way to get to the top but finally found what resembled a pathway and followed it up scrambling among rocks and mud and finally got to the top where there was a Nica family eating breakfast outside their farmhouse. The farmer seemed pretty surprised to see a white guy walking out of the jungle and came over to me. We couldn't understand each other but he pointed out a better way to get back to the road and I thanked him and make my way back to the hotel. I later spoke with someone and they told me that the guide book was wrong and the pyramid is actually located closer to the airport.

Since we needed to be at the dock by 9am to take the boat to Little Corn Island we skipped breakfast and caught a taxi to the docks. We still had some time to kill so went to Fisherman's Cave for some coffee. Then waitress asked us if we wanted breakfast and we said no, since we had to catch the 9am boat. She told us that the boat didn't leave until 10am(!) so we ended up having breakfast. Once it was getting closer to 10am we walked over to the dock having to pay a 3 cordoba ($0.15) dock tax. The boat people took down our names and passport information (I guess in case the boat sinks and we drown they can notify the embassy). We got on the boat and they collected 110 cordobas for the ride ($5.50), The boat was about half full but they wanted everybody to fill in the rearmost seats. In the front they had a barrel of gasoline loaded right in front of us. The fumes were pretty bad. The ride across was pretty rough with some waves and slamming down but overall wasn't too bad. As we neared the pier on Little Corn one of the boat operators yelled that there were Nicaraguan Coast Guard on the pier and for everybody to put on their life jackets. We docked at the pier without a problem, someone gave us a map of the island and we made our way towards the east side to check out places to stay for our next trip. Along the main sidewalk on the west side of the island we saw lots of boats that had been washed ashore during the hurricane a few weeks earlier.


The pathway took us past the "Bottle House" which is a pizza restaurant made our of beer and Flor de Cana bottles!



We made our way to Casa Iguana and went to their lodge for some beers. No shoes are allowed so we left them at the door and had a few Victorias while admiring the view of the beach



Next we took a walk north along the beach seeing lots of trees that had, presumably, fallen during the hurricane. We came across a few places with inexpensive, no frills cabanas (more like shacks) along the beach - Elisa's Place, Cool Spot, and Sunrise Paradise where the path seemed to end. We went back to Elisa's place and saw some people that were on the boat with us and had a few beers. Some kids came along selling coconut bread that was still warm from the oven. We bought a huge loaf for 25 cordobas ($1.25). We couldn't eat it all so we ended us giving about 1/2 of it to a friendly dog who seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

It was now about 12:30 pm and the boat back to Big Corn left at 2pm so we headed back to the other side of the island and had a few more beers at a sidewalk bar and walked around until it was time to go to the boat. Then ride back seemed to be a little more smooth, getting back to the pier at 2:30 or so.

We took a taxi back to our hotel, had some Gatorade to rehydrate and took a nap. Later we walked across the street to Casa Canada for dinner. When we arrived there were some staff members sitting on the stairs to the restaurant. As soon as we walked in they turned out the lights! It was only 6:30 so no way were they closed so early - we went back to our hotel and ordered a bottle of rum which we drank while playing cards and then had a good spaghetti dinner before going to bed.