Rama Cay is a small island in Bluefields Bay, about 30 minutes by panga from town, and home to one of the last communities of the Rama people. The Rama are one of Nicaragua's smallest indigenous groups; their ancestral language, Rama, has only a handful of fluent speakers remaining and has been the subject of documentation and revitalisation efforts. The community on the cay lives from fishing and subsistence agriculture, and has maintained a degree of cultural continuity that the mainland Rama communities largely lost through dispossession and assimilation.
Visiting Rama Cay requires basic sensitivity. The community receives visitors and there is a degree of informal tourism — boats from Bluefields dock at the island's small jetty — but this is someone's home and primary livelihood, not an exhibit. Ask before photographing people, buy local food or crafts if the opportunity arises, and keep in mind that the economic relationship between the town and the island has historically been unequal. The physical setting — a wooden-house island community surrounded by lagoon water, backed by jungle-covered coast — is evocative in itself, and the boat ride across the bay is part of the experience.