Our Caribbean Journey Begins

The first thing one should know about Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast is that it was colonized by the English, not the Spanish and it was not until the 1890’s that this region came under Nicaraguan control. That said the history and culture of this coast is very different than that of the rest of the country. When our panga (large motorboat) first pulled up in Bluefields (the big port town of R.A.A.S. or Region Autonomo Atlantico Sur), it felt like I had pulled up in Kingston during the shooting of the Harder They Come. Reggae music was blasting from every corner, tall Jimmy cliff’s in t-shirts with printed marijuana leaves helped me out of the panga and lightening quick English Creole flew through the air (I can’t understand a word of it). Here everyone is taught English and Spanish in school but speaks Creole on the streets. For some, Miskito or Garifuna is spoken in the home.
So how did I end up here? After our Wednesday evening class finished, we all took our bus to a fritanga (small food stand selling typical Nicaraguan fare) and then on to the bus station where we learned that there wasn’t room for us on the normal bus and that we would need to take the refurbished school bus which mean comfortable seats for only some of us. While not as bad as we expected, this meant among other things that our bags had to go on top of the bus along with 5 fine wood doors, a TV, 2 mattresses and countless boxes. This bus ride lasted what seemed to be an eternity as we bumped our way through the night until we were deposited at 3:30 in the morning en El Rama, the end of decent roads and the beginning of the water ways. In the darkness, we stumbled through passport control (there is a lot of cocaine trafficking in this area so security is pretty tight) and into the lines waiting for the pangas to leave. Somewhere during this time I managed to find a house that sold tortillas (think fry bread), cheese and coffee for 10 Cordobas or $.50. After trying to sleep for few hours in a waiting room and instead eating peanut m&ms and tangerines, we finally got onto our pangas and started down the river as the sun began to rise.
As the mist began to lift, we were able to see more and more of where we were. The river was a wide lazy one with hardly any houses on its banks. Instead, on either side, banana groves, palm trees and other vegetation flourished. Eventually the river widened, the spray became saltier and the water rougher as we passed an increasing number of boats ranging in size from small one person wooden canoes to larger boats that one imagined had a previous life crossing more treacherous waters. By nine o’clock, we had reached Bluefields where we briefly stepped out of the panga docks to buy patis (spicy meat and cheese empanadas) and strain our necks to see as much of Bluefields as we could from behind the harbor gates. All of a sudden any chance we had of passing as Nicaraguans faded as the archetype changed into lean, strong African men and equally dark women. This is not to be a discourse on race, but the contrast between the typical in Nicaraguan in the Managua and on the coast is striking. In fact, Nicaraguans from Managua are often referred to as españoles by residents of the coast. From Bluefields, we took our second panga back up the river a ways and to the dusty little town of the Pearl Lagoon which sits on a massive brackish lagoon of the same name. From there, we were met by a truck that took us down the one lane concrete “highway” to the community of Awas.