We left Utila on
Sunday afternoon and
arrived to Little Corn Island in Wednesday evening. One of the
hardest and longest trips to get fron A to B... so far. A different kind of experience, for
sure :)
On Sunday afternoon we took the ferry to main land Honduras but
it was kinda late so we decided to stay in La Ceiba and continue our
journey the next day. Then on monday we took a nice “ejecutivo
plus” -class bus to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. It took
the whole day and we arrived quite late so we took a cab to a hotel
near the bus station. The area was dodgy to say the least. In fact,
when we asked the staff where is the nearest restaurant (we were
starving) they said that the chinese was about 50m away but we should
not walk there as we might get robbed by gunpoint. Luckily the hotel
had a few cup-noodels for us. Delicious, when hungry.
On Tuesday we took another company's
bus to Managua, capital of Nicaragua. Again, another day in the bus.
Also in Managua it is not recommended to walk on the streets during
dark so we just had a dinner at a near restaurant and stayed in our
hotel. The restaurant was across the street which was fairly safe
distance, but anything longer was again a big no no to walk according
to the hotel staff.
On Wednesday we took a taxi to Managua
airport and bought tickets to the Corn Island. There is one local
airline, La Costena which flies to the Big Corn Island. We got return
tickets with open return dates for 165USD/person. Pretty good deal
around here.
There was a heavy thunder storm just
before the flight should leave. The plane was 12 seats Cessna. We
were seated right behind the pilots and saw all the instruments and
screens. The place was really modern and Olli especially liked to
watch the pilots operate the controls etc. We could clearly see for
example the weather radar which was quite interesting. There wasn't
any safety demonstrations or anything. Flight lasted 1,5 hours and
there were couple of rain clouds we navigated around. The pilots used
the radar to check if there was anything above green (low rain) and
if there was, they flew around the clouds. Then we were approaching
to Big Corn Island and saw in the weather radar that there was severe
rain (violet color on the radar) directly on the island. This time
the pilots simply went straight and through the very bumpy cloud. It
felt like a Six Flags roller-coaster. There was a couple of moments
when Maija was thinking that there would be news in Finland: “Plane
carrying two Finnish people crashed in Nicaragua...” ;) Landing
went fine in the end and both pilots (the first officer was flying)
seemed to know what they were doing.
Ok, so we were now on the Big Corn
Island but we still wanted to go to the Little Corn Island (small,
peaceful, no cars or motorcycles). So we took a taxi from airport to
the harbor and took a small speed boat ride to the Little Corn Island
(about 30-40 min). There was one other traveller couple (suprise,
suprise, a finnish woman (Jenni) and british man (Sky)) and all
other were locals. There was a thunder storm just before the boat
left but it looked like it passed so we left. Then after couple of
minutes ride the heavy rain started. Thunder, lightning, huge 4m
waves and the worst storm we have ever been. The locals on the boat
were crying and praying to their imaginary friends and Olli was
counting how far the lightning is (5 km was the closest count so no worries). Olli
wasn't as scared about capsizing (the sides of the boat were quite
high) as Maija was, but slightly anxious about lightning strike.
Maija was thinking that there would be news in Finland: “Three
finnish people missing after a severe storm in Nicaragua...“ ;) But
then after 40 min rough ride Olli saw the lights of Little Corn
Island. And finally we were in the little Corn Island. Wet as can be,
tired and happy to be alive.
We decided to take the same “hotel”
with the other couple so we walked across the island in complete
darkness, got a small and basic bungalow and changed to dry clothes.
We then had dinner together with the other couple, sharing and living
again and laughing to our boat adventure.
In the morning we woke up 7 am in the
beach bungalow (20 metres from the sea) and had the best breakfast in
the whole trip so far. We had arrived to paradise...
- Olli & Maija
PS. Sky got some pretty good video during our boat trip. I'll add link to it when he's ready editing it.
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| Last night at Utila, new DMs with instructors (Olli: Niiiice! ;) |
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| All set |
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| Ready to go |
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| Small snack before the ferry (pastellito and jugo de naranja) |
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| In La Ceiba, no guns to this restaurant |
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| We spent many hours in the buses |
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| Olli is checking tiers (they had some weird systems) |
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| Our boarding passes to Corn Island |
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| Still smiling.... |
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| Pilots getting ready |
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| Our bungalow outside |
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| The view from the door of our bungalow |
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| Our bungalow inside. Fairly waterproof in spite of the gaps on the wall. |
