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Despite its romantic name, there are no fields, blue or otherwise, near the steamy little lagoon town of BLUEFIELDS . The only town of any size on the Atlantic coast south of Puerto Cabezas, Bluefields gets its name from a Dutch pirate, Abraham Blaauwveld, who holed up here regularly in the seventeenth century, and it has retained the fugitive charm of a pirate town, perched on the side of a lagoon at the mouth of the Río Escondido. For most of the year it rains torrentially, except in May, when there's a short dry season, although it often rains then too. During these downpours the town - already ramshackle - can look somewhat forlorn.

Blufileños , as the town's inhabitants are called in Spanish, are mainly Creole, descended from Jamaicans. A fiercely proud and independent bunch, they are united in their mistrust of Managua and their delight in anything from the outside world, de out - meaning anywhere but the capital. A nostalgia for all things British, harking back to the days when the town imported steel from Sheffield, fabrics from France and dry goods from New Orleans, persists among the older generation. Both English and Spanish are spoken, although the English is heavily accented patois and takes some getting used to.

There's a lot of activity in town, and most of it takes place on the street, where cardtable stalls sell batteries, tape players and other contraband goods from Costa Rica. Some examples of English colonial tropical architecture have survived the years: low-slung wooden buildings, bounded by grilled verandas, sitting alongside Caribbean-style cabañas - small wooden shacks painted in faded reds, greens and blues. You can't see the Caribbean from the town as houses block the view, and to get a sense of being at the ocean's edge you'll have to get a motorboat ( panga ) from the muelle over to the harbour and administrative hamlet of El Bluff , a collection of motley government buildings strung diagonally across the lagoon with the breezy open Caribbean at the end of a finger of land.

Hurricane Joan flattened Bluefields and the surrounding area in 1988, and there are still a few signs of the tremendous devastation. The town is occasionally plagued by electricity and water shortages - a good reason to bring a torch and batteries, as well as a few candles, and to stock up on bottled water when you can. You have to be on your guard a bit in Bluefields: the atmosphere can be tense, especially at night, when the several beer halls empty and the local machete-carrying machos tumble drunkenly onto the streets. Petty theft is on the rise, and tourists stick out painfully in this environment. Watch your belongings and be careful walking around at night.

Since 1995 Bluefields has received a shot in the arm in the form of the URRACAN , or Universidad de las Regiones Autónomos de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense. The Bluefields campus is the largest of three on the coast - the others are in Puerto Cabezas and Siuna - and although most of the faculty are from the Atlantic coast region, volunteer professors also come from abroad, mainly Canada and the United States. The small campus is located about 1km from the centre of Bluefields, up the hill that backs the town to the northwest. During the last week in May, the streets of Bluefields are taken over by ¡Mayo Ya! , one of the most exciting fiestas in the country. Derived from the traditional May Day maypole celebrations of the British, ¡Mayo Ya! now features a mixture of reggae, folklore and indigenous dance that young Blufileños pair ingeniously with the latest moves from Jamaica.