Bluefields

The ride to El Rama was a very pleasant 220 kms on very good tarmac through some lovely scenery,
and the usual hazards of the road. On arriving in El Rama we found out about the boat to Bluefields and having turn one hotel down as it smelt of mould, booked into the Oasis del Caribean, a very pleasant clean hotel were we managed to squeeze into the smallest room possible and got blown away by the biggest fan, which in the heat was great. We walked around and once we had seen the main street, the outside of the church because it was closed, and enjoyed some roof top sculpture we had covered most of everything. As the boat leaves at 0530 in the morning we had an early night. Up just as it was getting light at 0445 we headed down to the jetty where we paid 200 cordobas (about $10 USD) each of the one was trip and having shown our passports to the police were ushered into boat No1, luckily covered as the day was looking rather grey. Having been administered to by the local minister on the hell fire awaiting us (or was it a watery grave?)if we didn't repent we sped off down the river for 1hr 45 mins at, I would think about 30 Kts, as we had 50 miles to cover.
The idea of seeing things as we travelled through the jungle didn't really happen as we were moving too fast, and we arrived safely in Bluefields
without hell fire or a watery grave being part of the journey. At 0730 nothing much is happening in any town, so we wandered around looking at the local police station, the boat terminal, some of the shore line dwellings,
the local boats (this one is carved out of a tree trunk),
and the local fire department. The park was in the process of being improved as most of the town was (or was it that it was never finished?) It then started to rain so we spent the next 2 hours in a restaurant having a leisurely lunch, watching kids play in the water, before returning at 1500 to El Rama. We didn't have the luxury of a cover on the way back, so spent the 105 minutes of the trip fighting with a polythene sheet as it flapped around our heads trying to keep as much rain off us as we could. The only saving grace of temperatures in the 100s is that getting wet is a rather cooling experience, so apart for ending up rather deaf from the noise of all the flapping, and not seeing anything of the terrain we arrived back only slightly worse for ware.