Miskito Keyes

On Monday we set off for the Cayos Miskitos, a set of “islands” 50km off the coast. The plan was to be there over Cody’s birthday. A friend of Cody’s, Rigo, works for the prominent company Mar Azul, a lobster buyer based in Puerto Cabezas. They outfit him with a big, fast, speed boat and enough supplies for a week at the Keyes. So, we boarded the big, fast, speed boat on Monday afternoon, arriving at Cayo Whippling in just under an hour, a trip that had taken us all day when we made the journey two years earlier by sailboat. Whippling is either the most impressive or most unimpressive of the Keyes depending on your perspective. There is literally no island to this island. No land to speak of, not a mangrove to shake a stick at; only a set of 8-10 stilted, open faced, wooden houses topped off with zinc. The houses birth out of the blank horizon, standing tall like soldiers. We stopped at one of the homes to purchase the lobster that was being kept on ice there by a full bodied Miskito woman and her family, she clearly being the negotiante. I witnessed the first of many lobster tail transactions in which our shipmate Ricky would inspect each tail carefully for color, size, firmness, and damage. He wielded a short, yellow plastic ruler that was used to ensure that the lobster tails were long enough, i.e. old enough, for harvest and sale. 450 pounds of lobster later everything was loaded into white sack bags and moved into the icy belly of the boat, just in time to watch the sun fall below the horizon.

Before the sunset you could see with the naked eye our destination, Cayo Maras in the distance. This key is surrounded by a ring of mangroves that can easily be spotted during day light. At night it seemed that the key eluded us. When previously we were cruising at alta velocidad, we were now inching our way through the calm, Caribbean sea. The starts blanketed the night sky, the milky way creating a hazy gape above us. A large meteor cut across our view. It seemed like the journey would never end. We cut through the water slowly, deliberately, trying to avoid the abundant reefs that fill the distance between Whippling and Maras. I could feel the tension in the group. No one was talking. I started to ask myself, should it really take this long? Why aren’t we there yet? Soon thereafter I could hear the men asking each other softly in Spanish and the in Miskito: do you see it? The entrance? GPS was pulled out, but all of the coordinates had been erased. The dark of night hung all around us…I lay on my back staring up at the sky wondering if I should have made a wish on the first star I saw that night to ensure our safe arrival. After approximately 2.5 hours one of the men shouted out in Miskito that he saw the island. He pointed forward as we all strained our eyes and failed to see it. He said the entrance it keeps moving. Then, sure enough, the outline of the mangroves grew before us. I released a huge sigh of relief. We carefully slipped through the entrance to Maras key, rounding up next to the house that would be our home for the next week. After the 450lbs of lobster tails were unloaded we strung our hammocks and slept until the break of day. The morning revealed clusters of stilted homes standing firm in the Miskito Blue sea, a color that can never be described or mimicked, surrounded by lime green mangrove swamps bathed in the early morning light.

As a side note, on our return trip it took approximately 10 minutes to pass between Maras and Whippling. Cody says we were never lost, just moving slowly to prevent any unforeseen reef-boat altercations…still seems like it took a looong time to arrive!