Paradise...right here

After whizzing our way through about half of Central America in under a week, we needed to slow down and unwind. And what better place to do so than the stunning (and cheap!) Caribbean paradise of the Corn Islands, about 30km off the coast of Nicaragua.

Many backpackers skip the Corn Islands as they are a bit of a schlep from the mainland. From Nicaragua's capital Managua its a five hour bus trip, two hour river boat and a rough nine-hour ferry ride – plus a speedboat ride if you want to stay on the smaller, more relaxed Little Corn island.

The alternative is to take a flight in tiny propellor plane. It was a bit of a splurge but we opted for the latter. After crossing four countries in 48 hours and spending the night in the sweaty armpit that is Managua, we did not exactly feel like roughing it.

After an early flight, by 10am we were on an exhilarating speedboat ride to Little Corn Island from Big Corn, where the airstrip is, bumping our way through the choppy swell. Living up to its name, little Corn Island is tiny. Long and skinny, you can cross from one side to the other in under 10 minutes. 

We met a lovely couple from the UK at the hostel in Managua who were on the same flight. They had arranged for a guy to meet them at the wharf and take them to their accommodation. We had nothing organised, so we tagged along with them and were able to rent a room at the same place, a well-build array of tidy, modern cabanas on a secluded beach on the quiet side of the island.

I could use words to describe this place, but I would be in danger of running out of superlatives and messing with over-used clichés trying to articulate the virtues of this little corner of paradise (there I go already!), so I'll use some pictures instead.

Sold yet? It didn't take us long to fall in love with this diminutive land mass, only 1.6 sq km and free of roads, traffic and over-enthusiastic development that plagues so many other beautiful Caribbean hideaways. 

Apart from a handful of laidback bungalow accommodations on the beach and a small village with a few restaurants, the island is home to just a few hundred people - many the direct descendents of pirates and shipwrecked African slaves, mixed in with indigenous Nicaraguans. They speak an extremely kooky version of Creole English, which was nearly impossible to decipher!

Islanders have a unique way of greeting each other. When you walk past a person, you say "ok", and after a few seconds pause (we're on island time here) they respond "alright." When you want to say something is good, you say "right here."

It was extremely tempting to just lay back in a hammock and do nothing (and there was plenty of temptation, with hammocks adorning every second palm tree), but there was a surprising amount to do on the island, and at relatively little cost.

Everyone's on "island time"

Most of the island is surrounded by a coral reef, so you can go in and snorkel right off the beach. We had to swim out a few hundred metres to reach it, and the coral was really only good in certain spots, but it was good exercise for us nonetheless. After a couple of days of tireless swimming, we rented a kayak to explore some of the more far-flung spots. We weren't disappointed. We saw a couple of big stingrays and plenty of coloured parrot fish, and also this enchanted forest of bright orange coral arranged like tree branches.

After stopping in at some of the beautiful untouched beaches on the north coast of the island, we decided to continue paddling and circumnavigate. As we headed around to the west of the island, the side closest to Big Corn Island, it became much calmer and easier to paddle. The southern tip of the island was a different story. Here, sizeable waves crashed into many bunches of offshore rocks.

To take a course in between the rocks and the shoreline would have been very bumpy, and we probably would have capsized. So we gave the rocks a wide berth and paddled all the way around the southern tip, before entering the calm shore in a break in the reef. At times it felt like we were almost paddling out to sea, but the surf wasn't really that rough, as long as we had our boat pointed into the wave and we were not side on.

The kayak

We'd heard stories of people that took snorkelling trips with local boatsmen and saw things like hammerhead sharks and sea turtles, so we decided to give that a go. This time we went right out onto the far side of the reef, where the swell was fairly rough but there were an amazing amount - and variety - of fish to watch. The coral was fairly similar - most of it was dull shades of green and brown reminiscent of army fatigues.

Almost straightaway, a small nurse shark drifted by our group and disappeared into a coral cave. Moments later, we came face to face (ok so we were snorkelling and a few metres above) with another, much larger one which was just under two metres in length. We watched, awestruck as it cruised around the reef, stopping by a sandy patch of the ocean floor to roll over on its back.

Later on, we saw a small, but perfectly formed sea turtle, which had khaki-coloured markings on its shell in similar tones to the coral. It was amazing to watch it flapping its front feet like wings as it floated around the reef. We also saw a few eagle rays floating by. Unfortunately that day the water was too murky to spot any hammerhead sharks. Our boat captain said the barracudas that hung out alongside the hammerheads would confuse our white-man flesh for fish and gobble us up! (Has to be up there with one of the craziest gringo jokes I've heard).

On the island itself there was wildlife aplenty, including the usual tropical suspects such as geckos, iguanas and turtles and an almost out of control population of crabs. Most were pretty small and benign looking, clear in colour with funny alien-looking eyes perched on the tops of their heads. Many shells on closer inspection turned out to be hermit crabs, with hairy orange legs sticking out to drag themselves across the sand.

Far more sinister were the much larger red and orange crabs that emerged out of their burrows just after sunset and ran wild on the walking tracks criss-crossing the island. These wre completely unlit and our only way home after a night out at one of the restaurants. 

Even these paled in comparison to the monster-sized blue crabs that looked to have bullet-proof shells. They blocked our path on pitch-black night walks on several occasions, and only reluctantly moved after being stunned with the torch and heavily prodded with a stick. I quickly developed an acute case of crab-a-phobia, and by the end of our stay was too afraid to use one of the tracks because of the size of some of the inhabitants living in burrows alongside!