Who doesn’t enjoy a nice stroll on the beach, enjoying the breeze, listening to the sound of the surf and perhaps finding some cute little shells?  That’s pretty much what you do on a beach right?  Not in Bluefields, Nicaragua.  There you walk the beach in search of snow:

Bluefields is a creation of the gods of geography. Located halfway
between the cocaine labs of Colombia and the 300 million noses of the
United States, Bluefields is ground zero for cocaine transportation.
Nicaraguan waters are near Colombian territorial limits, making the
area extremely popular with cocaine smugglers using very small, very
fast fishing boats…

When the Americans get close, the traffickers toss the cocaine
overboard, both to eliminate evidence and lighten their load in an
escape attempt.

"They throw most of it off," says a Lt Commander
in the US Coastguard. "I have been on four interdictions and we have
confiscated about 6000 pounds [2720kg] of cocaine, and I’d say equal
that much was dumped into the ocean."

Those bales of cocaine
float, and the currents bring them west right into the chain of
islands, beaches and cays which make up the huge lagoons that surround
Bluefields on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast.

"There are no jobs here, unemployment is 85 per cent," says Moises Arana, who was mayor of Bluefields from 2001 to 2005.

Only in (Central) America.

Found via Boing Boing.