Little Corn Island

07/04/2014

Today we'll to Corn island! 

16/04/2014

The flight from Managua to Corn island was exciting. For the first time I flew with an small airplane (only 12 passengers) and from my seat I could see what the captain was doing (he almost fell asleep). I felt like being under surgery and see what the surgeon is doing in that moment. 

Because the airplane was so small, they allowed us to carry a luggage of not more than 13 kg and a handy bag. I heard they were very strict with this rule and I knew I had more than 13 kg. So I moved to my daily backpack the heaviest things and I wore my mountain shoes (yes, it's ridiculous to go to a Caribbean Island with boots, but I was "desperate") and my hiking pants with lot of pockets (that of course I filled with everything I could). So I passed the weight control of my luggage (my friends unfortunately had to pay for the extra weight), but what I didn't know is that they were also going to weigh me together with my daily backpack. Fortunately they didn't weigh my daily backpack and they didn't make me any stories, but I can say to my father (that all the time tells me I gained weight) that me + my backpack + my pants with full pockets + hiking shoes weighed only 3 kg more than my weight before leaving Israel! 

The flight was really good, the problems began after we landed: I almost couldn't hear anything. What happened was quite obvious: I had a cold and I couldn't compensate during the landing. 

From Big Corn island we took a ferry to get to Little Corn island (yes, there are 2 islands, one called Big Corn and the other one Little Corn) . 

The island itself is a little paradise, with no cars, few restaurants, bars, cabanas and diving centers. There is not so much to do in the island beside diving, eating, lying in a hammock and sleeping. 

Even if this island is part of Nicaragua, the inhabitants talks English and Spanish, or a mixture of these two languages that was very difficult to understand. I don't know why, but it was very strange for me to speak English with the locals, so I continued talking in Spanish even knowing that English is their mother tongue. 

When we (me and a Swiss girl and a Sweden girl I'm travelling with) arrived at the port a man from a diving center we contacted the day before was already waiting for us. Before subscribing to any course, I explained them my ears problems, but they told me there was nothing to worry about and that I could dive taking some precautions. So we did it, we signed up to the Padi Open Water diving certification. It was long time I wanted to do it and now that I'm in one of the best and cheapest places to do it, I couldn't lose this opportunity. 

During the first day we learned some theory, we practiced in a confined water in the sea (2 m deep) and then we made our first real dive. It was absolutely amazing! No words to describe it. We didn't see many fishes, but this was my first real dive (I dived other two times before, but I wasn't independent at all and I couldn't totally control my swimming). Down there it's a complete different world, still unknown to me. Swimming with all the diving equipment makes you feel like an astronaut: you wear big and heavy air tank but you swim with "no gravity", you breath through the regulator and the sound of your breath is very clear and strong, you are "alone" with your internal peace, you cannot comunicate with other people with words, but only with signs (sometimes I got confused with some of the signs because in Italian they have a different meaning). 

Unfortunately I still had ears problems and it took me much more time than others to compensate and at the end of the dive itself, as soon as I ascended to the surface, I felt really bad. I saw everything moving around me (the waves didn't help neither), I had the feeling I was going to faint. It never happened to me before so I was a little bit scared, but fortunately I didn't panic, I grabbed the boat and I reached my instructor explaining her exactly what was going on. I was still in the water with my instructor next to me and I felt better within couple of minutes. Only after I realised that what happened to me was still caused by the cold I had. 

I got scared, but not enough to renounce to the course. 

The day after the weather was quite bad, so after another lesson in confined water, we had to postpone our second dive. 

The weather conditions didn't allow us to dive the day after. So we spent the day learning theory and taking our exam. 

On the forth day we've made other two dives. The weather conditions were better, but waves were big and the stream was very strong. Diving was really ok, but making our exercises at the surface, took us all our energy. 

We descended for our last dive on the fifth day till 16 m. This was for sure the best dive. We were able to see many fishes, stingrays and nurse sharks. These sharks were very curious and swam around us for a while. They are not dangerous at all. One of my friends even kicked many times one shark with her finn (she didn't realise that the shark was near her), but he didn't react at all and after a while he swam away.

So now I have my Padi Open Water certification and one more reason to come back to Israel : diving in the Red Sea! But before that, my next diving destination will be Roatan, one the Bay islands, Honduras. This is considered one of the best and cheapest diving spot in the world....