The Corn Islands are two islands (Big Corn and Little Corn), situated 70 kilometres off the Carribean coast of Nicaragua. When you arrive, you feel like you’ve left Nicaragua altogether. According to locals, you have.
Unlike Jamaica, Barbados or the Bahamas, The Corn Islands feel untouched by mass tourism. On Little Corn, there are no cars, so goods are transported by cart. There is also no electricity between 6 am and 2 pm. Depending on what your idea of paradise is, this is all part of the charm.
We spent our first night with some Catholic Nuns who ran the local school. Their AirBnB profile featured a Nun in her robes, standing on a beach, holding a conch shell, looking very stoked about life. In the morning we spoke to some of the students. It felt very strange speaking English again, which is the first language of most Corn Islanders. After a quick soccer game with the students, we packed our bags and made our way to the Port, where we took a boat to Little Corn for a week of diving.
It had been five years since our last dive so we were required to complete a refresher course. I'm glad we did because we had forgotten almost everything. Thankfully our dive instructor, Molly, was very professional and patient. She also was very passionate about everything ecology, especially sea slugs.
Along with playing music, running and sex, diving is one of the few points in time I feel completely present. I have never been good at meditation, but when diving, that state of being came more naturally. You relax, regulate your breathing and try to take in as much as possible. Diving also feels very voyeuristic. Our anatomy says humans shouldn’t be down there. For better, but usually worse, humans find ways to bend nature to our will.
On the return journey from one of our dives, we were stopped by the Nicaraguan Navy. They were searching for illegal immigrants from Venezuela. This smuggling route was popular because it skipped the many borders en route to the United States. Once there, Venezuelan asylum seekers can access temporary visas, due to the ongoing political and economic crisis. Unfortunately, getting there is the hard part.
Humans are not the only cargo trafficked via the Corn Islands. In the mornings I would see people walking the beach. Initially, I thought they were picking up rubbish. It turns out, they were searching for cocaine bricks, known locally as white lobsters.
Apparently, it was common for narcos to throw the cocaine overboard when they were about to be busted. Some would inevitably wash up on shore. The lucky few who find them sell it back to the narcos. Our diving instructor told us most of the businesses on the island were started by white lobsters, including our favourite breakfast spot.
On our final evening, I sat at a bus stop in the shape of a lobster I stared aimlessly across the Caribbean Sea. Next to me, a group of fishermen assemble lobster traps. Their boats were lined across the isolated beach. They look like they haven't been used for some time. One of them has even been converted into a makeshift bar. One of the workers tells me they prohibit lobster fishing for most of the year, so they stockpile traps for the small window they can head out. For the rest of the year, they assemble lobster traps and evidently - drink.