Villagers clean up on cocaine

Villagers living on Nicaragua's remote Mosquito Coast are living like the rich thanks to tonnes of free cocaine washing up on their shores. The bags of cocaine, worth millions of dollars, are coming from Colombian speedboats on "narco-routes" which drop the booty overboard if intercepted by US and Nicaraguan patrols, guardian.co.uk reported.

Currents carry the bags towards shore. People living in villages such as Karpwala and Tasbapauni who find it are then offered up to $4000 a kilo for the cocaine - seven times less than US street value - by Colombian traffickers.

"They consider it a blessing from God. You see people all day just walking up and down the beaches keeping a lookout to sea," Louis Perez, the police chief from Bluefields, the main port on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, said.

Tasbapauni village leader Percival Hebbert, 84, said life was "plenty better".

"The community is like this: you find drugs, this one find drugs, the next one find drugs - that money is stirring right here in the community, going round and round," he said.

The local church has just installed a shiny white floor thanks to a donation from fisherman, Ted Hayman, who reportedly found 220kg of cocaine. Mr Hayman has also converted his shack into a three-storey mansion with iron gates and a satellite dish.