The maypole dances performed in the sultry Caribbean port of Bluefields, Nicaragua, are several shades raunchier than the gentle gambols staged on English village greens each spring. Sweaty, rum-soaked and pulsing with raw energy, the Bluefields maypole shakes to riotous drumbeats that hail from distant Africa .Yet this is just one part of a Caribbean coast that is as culturally diverse as it is fragile.
Two autonomous regions, north and south, mark the fringes of eastern Nicaragua. Inland lies a flat, densely forested lowland with endlessly meandering jungle rivers, tropical savannah and swamps. Meanwhile, the coastline is fringed by hundreds of kilometres of
