Bungled trips, shady hustlers, and corn islands

Chris and I ponder in thought as to how we will spend our next 5 hours on Big Corn island before we can catch a flight out to Managua, and then eventually a bus back to Leon. We decided to put the brakes on the travelling for a bit and post in Leon, volunteering with Queztaltrekkers, an roganization that leads hikes up volcanoes to help support a school for street children. Some of the pictures posted of nicaragua are from our trip with Quetzaltrekkers up to el hoyo (the hole) a volcano with a nice view. After the hike, we spent the weekend in Leon partying and then sent out for corn islands by land, something which not many travellers do, and we would soon find out why. most simply fly from managua to the corn islands, but we decided to go by land for some adventure and to save some money. This became a disaster. 2 hour bus ride to managua without incident, but it was on the 7 hour bus ride to El Rama which made me think about posting in Leon with queztaltrekkers, thinking: man I really dont want to do more 7 hour bus rides. Of which we have had our fair share. So we get to el Rama late and night and there is nothign to do but find a hotel to stay in. Met a nice American couple that just got engaged and enojyed a meal and some conversation with them and Reggae Town Ranch Discoteca which was more of a big empty bar then a club. this is also the time and place in which we discovered that the ferry to Big Corn island leave only on wednesday (this being sunday night).Slept in a little the next day and went to the dock to take the panga to Bluefields, the port town on the coast from which the ferry to the corn islands leaves. The panaga however does not leave until it is full, which means 18 people, which means we would have to wait over 4 hours. However, during this time I did find a place to use the internet and phone the peace corps, and found out I had been invited to volunteer in honduras, starting June 30. So it looks like I will come home after this trip and come right on back to the same region. And ironically, we had completely skipped honduras on our way to nicaragua. So we finally caught the panga to bluefields, which took an hour and a half, and started on our way to find a cheap hotel. While we thought El Rama was kind of seedy and sketchy, goddamn if Bluefields didnt outright win that title and then some. Upon exiting the boat we were approached by Spicer, and local hustler who wanted to help us find a cheap hotel. Well rest assured we have encountered many of these characters before, but Spicer would prove to be the most annoying and persistent of all the hustlers. He essentially latched onto us for an hour or two posing as a friendly local, but when we finally tried to really shake him off the obvious truth revealed itself when he asked us for some money. We did not give him money. He came back the next day and for about 30 minutes entreated chris to give him money, stating many - although each irrelevant- reasons as to why we should give him money. The most obvious being that he showed us to our hotel, something we reminded him we could have done on our own and had he stated upfront he wanted money we would have of course refused. The best part of the story, if you remember those of you paying attention to the timetables here, is that we had to spend 2 days in the grotesque caribbean port town hellhole known as bluefields, a fate which seemed worse than death upon our first revelation of this truth. The seedy atmosphere of bluefields was only enhanced by the fact that A) we were the only two white faces walking around, and B) this mad all of the countless unemployed black creole hustlers B-Line straight to us to offer still more countless goods and services of which we wanted no part of. Wednesday we finally made it to the boat for Big Corn island, a simple journey with locals and foreigners mixed, that would evolve into a 5 hour horror show complete with almost everyone puking their brains out and the kids -oh lord the poor kids- endless in their shreiking and wailing. I too became seasick, although not to the point of throwing up, I simply stayed in one place, meditating and feeling miserable while the entire world around me collapsed into shrills and cries followed by eerie silence, off and on. Meanwhile Chris was having a gay old time, jumping around the front of the boat and back inside, not one hint of sickness about him. When the shitshow ended, we fell about the land of Big Corn Island, only to be met with on and off rain for the rest of the day. In between slight breaks in showers we would move with our bags to find a place. We quickly realized big corn island wasnt the paradise we had hoped for, more of a fishing island than a paradise, and that paradise was waiting for us on little corn. so we slept on big corn and headed to little corn the next day, only to be welcomed by 5 days of perfect weather in a lush tropical paradise. pristine white sand beaches and crystal blue and green waters, finally we had found what we had been looking for for oh so long. Plus the fact that you could get $8 lobster whenever you wanted helped us fall in love with the place even more. but now its back to leon, a city we enjoyed and our future home for the next 2 months. time to hike volcanoes and help street children.