by Coco Palmer
Corn Island is a beautiful, unspoiled place. Its white sand beaches, turquoise waters, swaying palms, and coral reefs are the stuff of hedonist getaway dreams. Eleven square kilometers of postcard picture scenes everywhere you turn: tropical forested hills, mangroves, and beaches.

It is also a place clearly at a crossroads. The Island has had ever-shifting populations and their means of subsistence have varied. It is poised to remake itself as a tourist destination, and the time is now.

What is the story? Legend has it that the first name given to Corn Island was Skeleton Island due to table scraps left over from the resident Kukra Indians’ cannibalistic appetites. English pirates and a few French, Dutch, and other Europeans used the Island as a base of operations and resupply for their raids against the rival Spanish Empire’s fleet and settlements in the region.

by Philip B. Hildebrand
Our dugout canoe motored slowly upriver leaving civilization far behind. The sun sank below the trees and all color disappeared. We pushed onward into the increasingly darkening wilderness. No one other than Miskito Indians had been here for at least twenty years. Augustine, rifle at the ready, crouched in the bow, his keen eyes studying the shoreline hoping for some sign of movement. Octavio tried to entice me into shooting a monkey high up in a tree, claiming it would be delicious with the roots we had found earlier.

Nicaragua’s eastern lowlands are a world apart from the rest of the country. This vast mosaic of forests, rivers, lakes, and swamps is the Miskito Indian’s homeland and they are its masters. Having lived for years in Puerto Cabezas, I know the area’s ocean, offshore cays, coastal communities, and major lagoons as do only a handful of foreigners. But these are not the region’s heart; rather they are its genteel fringes. To better understand this land and its people, I had come here to begin learning how to travel, hunt, fish, and live in the wilderness. My tutors were experts for few know this place as do the friends in whose care I was. When we set out, Octavio told me, “Now you are going to live in the bush like a real Miskito.”

by MSc. Ronald Betancourt
(from the Spanish original)
Among so many places I have visited throughout Nicaragua, one worthy of special admiration is the Río San Juan. This impressive and majestic water route has inspired poets and writers, conquistadores and pirates thirsty for riches, scientists, and those just curious about nature. From their lips pours a flow of poetry and praise for its majesty and fascination.

This small piece of Nicaragua has become a historical and cultural paradise in which the echoes of past struggles resound in the dreams of each visitor. Nature and all its attributes interplay with each other. The residents show us the simplicity of their culture and the grandness of their way of life.
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