Island of eternal debauchery

Here is a story from a collection of fairy tales. It has music, fancy costumes, and barefoot dancing. Melbourne photographer Rebecca Rutten spent three months in a hostel on one of the islands of Nicaragua. And everything there was beautiful, crazy and not at all what it seemed at first glance.

(Total 14 photos)

Rutten first went there in the winter of 2014 for a few days. But the following year she returned to this place for a longer period. On this isolated island, travelers leave behind their office life for the freedom of paradise. Here any stranger is treated like an old friend. Here the days and nights are filled with alcohol and love - bright, but fleeting, like a flash - in the midst of virgin nature.

Travelers from all over the world arrived to move on after a few days of madness. With each passing day, Rebecca felt the amazement that had filled her in her first days on the island disappear. The new was disappearing: everyone lived on this small piece of land the same story of debauchery. People reveled in each other, and it was completely unclear whether time had completely stopped, or whether the hands of the clock were running at cosmic speed and it didn’t matter how much time had passed.

There was beer - and a lot! - Ketamine, Ritalin, Valium. Virtually no one slept. People had sex right on the floor. Over time, Rutten was overcome by a feeling of some kind of heavy deja vu. What at first seemed like a haven of simplicity, now turned into something completely different.

According to the photographer, the place, which she herself dubbed as "Never-Never Land", is an allegory for the primitiveness of man. But even such base moments are not devoid of special poetry. Peter Pan would never stay here. However, this is a kind of haven for "lost" boys and girls - people who are rapidly fleeing from the hardships of the outside world to a place where pain and pleasure are almost indistinguishable.