TripOut Gay Travel:
Little Corn Island, Nicaragua by Jesse Archer

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  Derek's Place North East corner of Little Corn Island
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  Dive Little Corn
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  Dolphin Dive

Escape to the island that time forgot. At the moment, it still exists. Little Corn Island is socked away in the Caribbean of 50 years ago, maybe more. For the experience, follow these directions:

Start in Managua, Nicaragua. From there, fly or bus it to Bluefields (on the coast), hop a plane and fly 45 miles to Big Corn Island. Once there, take a taxi ($1) to the wharf and board a motored panga for a 40 minute race across the sea. Nobody said getting away from it all is easy to get to.

My panga (a small flat-bottomed motorboat) is so overloaded, and the ocean swells so menacing, that the entire time I’m gauging which island will be closer to swim for once we sink: the one we just left, or the one we’re headed for? Thirty minutes later, we crash up onto a beach. Two locals maneuver up the wooden staircase that will unload us onto Little Corn Island. Welcome to the past.

There is no shopping here. No cars, no roads, no motorbikes. Not a single luxury. The island is tiny, remote, and undeveloped. Only dirt trails traverse it. The only wheels belong to wheelbarrows and the odd bicycle.

Searching the guidebook, my boyfriend and I decide to stay at “Derek’s Place,” which is on the other side of the island. A friendly local tells me how to walk there. “Head to Bridget’s Place,” he says. “Then take a right and follow the path.”

We walk past a wooden stilted home. Hello? Bridget? We take an arbitrary right and head uphill past shacks cobbled together from aluminum flotsam. Reggae music blares: “I caught you suckin’ on my brotha’ lollipop.” I listen to these lyrics. “Suckin’ it, I caught you suckin’ it…” And even though we’re officially lost, I already like this place.

The jungle path is dense, and nobody’s around. When darkness falls, we’re still lost and (of course) we neglected to pack a flashlight. My vision blurs into fuzzy static, like an oncoming migraine. To my astonishment, the static is the blinking of fireflies, dozens of fireflies, helping to light our way.

Over the next week, I will continue to walk these trails. One leads to an old radio tower, a lookout you can climb to get an incredible aerial view of the entire island. It’s tiny, only about one mile squared. If Little Corn Island exhaled, it would be quickly swallowed by the crystal blue Caribbean.

Tourists who discover this place have two SCUBA diving alternatives. There is Dolphin Dive
and Dive Little Corn, and although the diving is not as spectacular as it is off the nearby Honduran Bay Islands, it’s not bad and they do take Visa. This is key, because otherwise it’s a cash-only island. There is no bank, or ATM. Tiny bodegas selling soap and crackers may trade dollars at a bad rate, in a pinch.

The locals (a mix of English, Spanish, African, Miskito) number fewer than 1,000 and speak Creole. They also speak English, with a questionable literacy perhaps best evinced by one strapping straight local. He struts around town in a shirt that reads: “All men are idiots, and I married their king!”

Derek (yes, of “Derek’s Place”) is one of several ex-pats who came to this island and couldn’t leave. With a long red, braided beard, Derek is reminiscent of the pirates who once rested here before plundering the mainland. He’s built several private cabanas over his patch of paradise ($35 per hut, nightly) and although cheaper accommodation can be found elsewhere, Derek’s Place has personal flair.

Our stilted, bamboo hut is adorned with hand painted murals, a wall of empty Flor de Caña bottles of rum, and mattress beds (mosquito net included). We don’t even lock it; Derek says we won’t have to worry. This isn’t to say that the island is safe or tidy, by any means. There are opportunistic locals, flea-bitten dogs, and let’s just say there’s not a whole lot of recycling going on.

Derek’s wife Ana prepares meals for the guests ($10/dinner), often from his latest spear-fishing catch. Ana also includes appetizers from right off the property such as breadfruit. Breadfruit! I think of Mutiny on the Bounty and suddenly feel like a big gay pirate.

I’ve got breadfruit and a boyfriend, and although the most affection we would dare in public is a tender pat on the head, there are deserted stretches of sunny white sand for secret swashbuckling. That, and the late-night, full-moon skinny-dipping.

It takes a couple days on Little Corn to stop trying to be busy like you are back home. Slowly, you unwind. The sound of city traffic is replaced with lizards rustling in the bushes. Languid days pass at the beach, reading in a hammock, or watching hens peck white flesh from out of fallen coconuts.

Occasionally, a coconut rockets from the sky into the ground beside your head and, lazily, you recall that the nearest hospital is far, far away somewhere. That’s about all the thinking there is to be done on modern convenience. There’s not much to distract you from falling into the zone of “yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.”

One day, I stayed late in “The Village,” stopping to eat at the Comedor Almendro. The sun was starting to set, and I still had a half-hour slog through the jungle to my cabana on the other side. So I decided to order something “quick” from the big owner, Miss Martha.

“May I have a ham and cheese sandwich?” I ask her.

“A what?”

“A ham and cheese sandwich,” I repeat.

“You want a ham and cheese sandwich?”

“Yes, please.”

Miss Martha nods, but then she doesn’t go into the kitchen. She heads past me to stare off into the sea. She stares off into the sea for at least five minutes straight.

If Miss Martha doesn’t hurry up I’ll be navigating a haphazard jungle trail in pitch dark, but there is no hustle here, no “snapping to it.” When Miss Martha is good and ready, she’ll go start on that ham and cheese.

One day, someone with big money and big vision will come to Little Corn and quicken the pace. For now, Miss Martha and I soak in the slow together; the sun dips into the still, silent ocean and I relax. The fireflies will light my way home.

Jesse Archer is the author of You Can Run: Gay, Glam, and gritty travels in South America. For more information, visit http://www.jesseonthebrink.com.