A nice week in Little Corn Island

We spent a nice week in Little Corn Island just relaxing, scuba diving a little bit (5 dives each), swimming, walking, eating good food with nice company. Scuba diving was ok, we saw for example lots of nurse sharks which we haven't seen before :) We dove with Dolphin dive shop which was really good, very friendly staff and well organized. As we are now divemasters, the scuba diving was only 25 USD / tank (10 USD cheaper).

We were considering to stay longer on the Little Corn Island but two of the neighbouring bungalows in our place were robbed so we decided to leave that day. It kind of killed the mood. Other robbery happened while our friends were sleeping. Somebody (locals knew immediately who it was) came inside from the window and took all their cash. We have been lucky so far but I felt very sorry for them. Apparently also two other joints in the island got robbed the same night by the same guy. Later we heard the culprit had done this before many times. And to further solidify our decision to leave, the assholes brother was a known rapist! The rapist brother actually came to the “crime scene” to comment something about his brothers doings. Btw. Elsa has a night watchman on premises but he was sleeping... or as we are pretty sure, in on the deal... This kind of things pisses us off but what can you do. The locals at the little corn island seemed disturbed and angry, but then again the asshole had done this many times before and they can't seem to do anything to stop it even though the guy had spent many times in jail.

Oh well, we are off the small island and waiting to get a flight from Big Corn Island (which is pretty lame compared to the small one). We have to stay here until saturday before there is space in the flight. We plan to leave Nicaragua immediately by bus when getting to Managua and stay in Honduras for one night before taking a bus/boat to Belize. It should be the safest of all the Central American countries and provide pretty good diving.

-Olli & Maija

Italian gourmet in Little Corn Island

Everything comes by boats to Little Corn Island

Maija found something interesting...

...it was a sea star.

Small lion fish

Bigger lion fish

Nurse shark

Nurse sharks are very friendly and curious

Panga (A passenger boat between little and big Corn Islands)

Olli is waiting for panga to leave

Big Corn Island

Via Dolorosa to Little Corn Island

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.

Last night at Utila, new DMs with instructors (Olli: Niiiice! ;)

All set

Ready to go

Small snack before the ferry (pastellito and jugo de naranja)

In La Ceiba, no guns to this restaurant

We spent many hours in the buses

Olli is checking tiers (they had some weird systems)

Our boarding passes to Corn Island

Still smiling....

Pilots getting ready

Our bungalow outside

The view from the door of our bungalow

Our bungalow inside. Fairly waterproof in spite of the gaps on the wall.

We are done and leaving

We have now done our divemaster course and we are ready to move on. We have been 6 weeks here in Utila and done over 40 dives. I'm happy DM course is over and I can just do fun dives again. I think I'm more or less done with PADI courses for this trip.

I'm still happy I did the courses. I have to say after rescue diver and DM courses I feel more confortable underwater. We have also done fun dives alone and that has been the best diving ever cause you can go just as slow as you want. We both like to dive very slow and just look at all kind of small things. The big things will find you. I think the slower you go the more you see.

Finally some conclusion about the Utila island. It is a very nice place. Living and diving here is cheap so this is a good destination for budget traveling. Without doing any diving courses here maybe one week is a long enough to see best dive sites (Halliburton wreck, Black hills, Ted's point and north side of the island) and island itself. Generally there is much less reef fish here compared to all the other places in the world we have dived. Also coral has been more colorful in other places. There is a lot of dive shops on the island. We dove in Alton's (2 fun dives) and Bay Island college of diving (all the rest).

There are good and quite cheap restaurants and all kind of food available. We are spending on average less than 30 euros for lunch and dinner with couple of drinks per day. It's low season now and last couple of weeks have been very quiet. There hasn't been any other customers in our hotel for three weeks and also in dive shop it has been less customers. Still weather has been very good, about 31 degrees of celsius every day, water is 29-30 degrees and visibility is from 10-20 metres. It has rained during some evenings and nights but only few times during day time. Rainy season should start in October.

So, we are leaving on next Sunday. 

Our next destination is planned to be the Corn Islands, Nicaragua. 

Naihin kuviin ja naihin tunnelmiin :)

-Maija & Olli, PADI Divemasters

PS. Pari kertaa on jo melkoisesti tehnyt mieli Oululaisen jalkiuunileipa viipaleita kera oivariinin, Polar juuston, meetvurstin ja suolakurkun...

Texas style ribs for a birthday girl and pork chop for Olli. 

One of the Maija's new friend.

Maija is on the left next to captain Willie.

View.

Maija is enjoying a boat ride.

I'm deep ;) (31.7 m)

The big fish ;)

Trumpet fish

Something...

Angelfish

Yellow seahorse

Brown seahorse

Fish

Cleaning crab

Some kind of shell

Olli is assisting at the rescue diver course.

This is oxygen, it will help you. May I give it to you?

The main reason we choose BICD (the boat with a proper roof/shade)

Maija's another cute friend.

Watch your head...

Newly graduated DMs with IDC Staff  Instructor Kirsten

DM course is progressing

We have been more or less busy with the Dive master course last weeks. We usually have some program  every day. In the evenings we are usually so tired we just go to have dinner and then to sleep. We have been doing the course three weeks now and we'll try to finish it within next two weeks. We extended our apartment to the end of September so plan is hit the road in the beginning of October.

Olli went to the whale shark boat at Friday but only saw the shape of a whale shark from the boat. But he saw the biggest seahorse (20cm) he has ever seen while diving last week. And he got to snorkel with hundreds of spinner dolphins when coming back from dive trip. They came right next to Olli and others. I wasn't on that trip unfortunately.

Next two days we will assist at the Rescue diver course so we'll act like tired, panicked and missing divers and students have to rescue us. We have to assist in two Open water courses, one Advanced open water course and one Rescue diver course totally. I have all done after Rescue diver course and Olli still has to do one Open water more.

-Maija

The best caipirinhas so far  (nothing like at Taylor's place in Costa rica, though ;))

Tuna sandwich and homemade fresh lemonade for lunch

The Rescue dog

Whale sharks have arrived to Utila

Whale sharks have arrived to Utila. I saw one today, it was 20ft  / 6m long! That's was so awesome! That is now the biggest fish I've ever seen. It is expected that they will be around about one week...

-Maija

Divemaster trainees

We decided to start the dive master course so we are going to stay here in the Utila next 4-6 weeks. We are going to dive almost every day and of course we had to do all kinds of water and diving skills exercises, read a manual, do exams etc. We also have to assist an instructor in the open water and advance open water course and train to lead dives and help to load the boat for dives. We don't have any plans to work as a dive master at the moment but it will be an option of course after the course.  The course is a cheap way to dive as much as possible and get more comfortable while diving. On the other hand it is a little bit fun that we pay money for "assisting" at the dive shop :)

-Maija

Olli is practicing for swimming kills.

Little bit reading...

Maija has everything ok on the top of the wreck.

At the Haliburton wreck.

Fish

No idea...

This is oxygen, it will help you. May I give it to you?

We are certified Rescue Divers now. We finished our three days course today.  The course was quite exhausting. We started course with PADI-video, reading book and doing 10 pages of knowledge reviews. On the second day we did rescue skills training at the dock (2m deep water). That included all kind of skills how to help tired, paniked or non-responding diver. We trained for example towing, rescue breathing and also underwater training. It took about 6 hours to do all this (there was 4 of us in the course). So our foreheads are quite burned... ;) 

Today we did two boat dives where we had practical emergency scenarios. There were an instructor and two dive master trainers we had to rescue all the time. They jumped off from the boat, panicked, went out of air, took our regulators off, tried to ascend too quickly, vomited on Olli etc... There was also missing diver scenario. I found him first from the bottom (7m). He was non-responding so I had to take him to the surface and tow him to the boat while doing rescue breaths thought a pocket mask and taking both's equipment off same time. On the boat I gave him oxygen and did CPR until he came responding.

It is surprising how hard rescuing is. Only towing on the surface is hard and when you have to give rescue breathing same time it's even harder. All other students and DM-trainers were men so they were all bigger than me so that make it even harder for me of course. 

After boat dives we did the final exam. It went well, I got 46 / 50 and Olli 48 / 50 points. And now we are certified rescue divers.

The reason why we did the course is basically now we are able to do dive master course if we want. And of course we learnt good skills which make scuba diving more safe and comfortable to ourself. And of course if something happens while we are doing fun dives (which we will do lots during our trip) we know how to help. It is important to know how to help in a safe way. Safe for the victim AND yourself.

Let's see what's happening here next...

-Maija

We had to read a couple of books and do 10 pages of knowledge reviews.

You can buy 100% coconut water in the bottle. It's good to have a bottle of it available while doing knowledge reviews.

Just graduated Rescue divers with instructor Ashley.