Both Nicaraguans and tourists had described Little Corn Island to us as paradise. Nothing but beaches, a few hotels and hostels, a handful of restaurants, small stores to buy extremely limited selections of food, and dive shops. People raved about the scuba diving. Two tickets to paradise please.
The Corn Islands are approx, 80km off the coast of Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea. It’s made up of two Islands, Big Corn and Little Corn. Big Corn has cars and roads, a small airport, all sorts of business, a hospital, etc. Little Corn has no motorized vehicles and just foot paths, only half of them paved. You can easily walk around all of Little Corn in half a day. We spent all of our time on Little Corn.
It’s currently the rainy season in Little Corn so although it was nice when we arrived, the rains followed a couple days later. Normally the rains come and go daily during the rainy season but this year they seemed to want to linger. Although we spent time walking the beaches under threatening skies, our only true beach day was the day after we arrived.
What do you do on an island when it’s raining? Get wet. By scuba diving. We did that. However, because of warmer ocean temperatures currently, the corals around Little Corn are bleached and not as colorful as they normally are. We were told this started just a couple months ago and is temporary, and the colors will come back as the water temp cools back down.
Because of this, the diving was good but not as great as we hoped (could definitely see the potential). We saw lots of nurse sharks, lobsters and crabs, some stingrays, a turtle and a wide variety of fish. We ended up doing 6 dives including a night dive that provided an appreciation I did not get during my first night dive many years ago.
At one point during this dive, we all sat on the ocean floor about 35 feet down, and turned off our lights. After sitting in complete darkness for a period of time, bioluminescence could be seen and small strings of glowing green lights (known as string of pearls), or individual blue or green lights were all around us. It was very trippy and, very cool. I thought we sat on the bottom observing this for maybe five minutes and was shocked when the dive master said we actually sat there in the darkness for fifteen minutes.
Because of it’s location, relative anonimity, and time of year, Little Corn was not crowded. We ran into the same people over and over, eating at restaurants, at the beach, or even on the water. Being on the Caribbean side, many locals spoke English (as well as Spanish and Creole). They were extremely friendly to tourists and would usually say hello or want to chat as you walked down the path. We also spent time with people we met earlier in Nicaragua, in Bluefields or Ometepe.
Overall Little Corn Island was good, but based on circumstances of the time (difficulty getting there, water temperatures, rain), it left me still searching for paradise.
Now it’s off to Costa Rica (again).
Life is good!
Side note: While people in Little Corn were extremely friendly, I have found Nicaraguans to be very friendly throughout our trip. In big bad Bluefields, several people were very willing to provide assistance if needed. One woman stopped to help translate when she heard me butchering Spanish as I tried to order. Another person who told me his story about living in the US illegally and being young and dumb (i.e. made mistakes and spent time in CA prison before getting deported) provided knowledge and assistance for no reason except kindness. When we got on an overly crowded local chicken bus, locals held our groceries, laughed and smiled as we got jostled around and crashed into their private space, and multiple times offered Sonja their seat.