Unda' Da' Sea

Day 31. Little Corn, Nicaragua. Thursday, 07.07.11. 7:48 a.m.
We went into the village yesterday for lunch and stayed to walk around. It's about a 30 min. walk from the village back to our bungalow. We had a lot of rain yesterday, too, which made for a really wet walk back!

The girl who makes breakfast here is named Rachel. She is a young, beautiful, pregnant woman. She made us fresh fruit with cinnamon and pecans, scrambled eggs, and "flour tortillas", which is not your traditional flour tortilla. These are more like fried, doughy biscuits. They are warm and chewy and PERFECT with the home made banana-pineapple-cinnamon jam that is made from.... yes, the fruit that grows in the orchard. Heaven in my mouth.

Ramon happens to own a snorkeling business, and Little Corn, according to National Geographic, is one of the better places to snorkel in the world! He set us up for a snorkeling trip for $15 per person. Can't beat that! The coral reef stretches for what seems like forever. We saw schools of bright blue fish, yellow and black striped fish, clown fish, and my favorite, the Red Parrot fish. We also swam amongst several nurse sharks! The guide's took us out into the deeper part of the ocean so that we could swim with 9 foot hammerhead sharks. Yes, sharks. Full size, man eating, hammer head sharks. 5 of them to be exact. A "family". Open water is one of my largest fears. Put sharks in that open water and you will see that my pants are soiled, or in this case, my bikini bottoms. But, this trip has been about conquering my fears, so I jumped into the depths of the ocean to find these huge sharks with the other 5 people brave enough to go. As we swam in the open water to find these sharks, we came across severl large eagle rays! The way they glide through the water is so graceful.

So what about the sharks..? Well, fortunately for me, we never saw that family of 5 hammerheads. The guides said we were swimming right where they live, so they must have gone out hunting. Well, that's just fine with me! No sharks, I'm gone. The eagle rays were amazing... and scary.... enough. And, I can now say that I have swam in the middle of the ocean. Fear conquered.


With soiled bikini bottoms,

HK