Cruising in Nicaragua
I arrived in Nicaragua on the 9th of October by boat, from Los Chiles to San Carlos. This route seems to be mostly used by local people. On that day a 48 year old German guy and I were the only two ‘gringos’. He told me it was his 7th
time travelling in Nicaragua, which made me very happy. After not being too crazy about Costa Rica I needed this country to be good! Don’t want those Irish people seeing me again too soon. We had a few police checks along the way. Everybody had to jump and put on a lifejacket, and then just threw them off again when the coppers were out of sight.
It took about an hour and a half in our rickety wooden boat. Luckily we were in a Nicaraguan boat. Seems they’ve had some issues lately regarding who owns that strip of water. According to my guide book, the Nicas are winning that battle right now, so passage by Tican (Costa Rican) boats is risky.
Not a whole lot happens in San Carlos, which I guess is part of its charm. People fish, and people eat fish. It’s a small town at the side of the San Juan river, and I thought it would be more interesting that the usual border on the Pacific side. And I believe it was.
The most interesting thing there right now is the insect plague they’re experiencing. This left myself and a German guy swinging on our rocking chairs in the dark that evening, for fear of being attacked.
The next day I found another shaky boat to float down the river in. I’m usually pretty confident on the water but these vessels we’re exceptionally dodgy. They were very long and while the front and back went down, the middle went up and vice versa. So we rocked and shaked our way eastwards for three hours, all the while me picking a child I would pluck from wreckage and swim ashore heroically with, in the likely event that the boat collapsed.
The Lonely Planet calls the trip from San Carlos to El Castillo ‘the best journey in Nicaragua’. And it probably is. Unless of course you are from Ireland, in which case 3 hours of green at either side isn’t quite as big a novelty.
My first question to the good people of El Castillo was ‘Where is the internet?’ But, contrary to what the guidebook says, there isn’t any. The townspeople got together a while back and decided it was too slow and expensive, so they all got rid of it. Three days without the world wide web? Travelling really is a challenge sometimes.
I strolled around the village; took about 4 minutes to take all of it in. Found a nice little wooden hostel overlooking the waters edge. I asked the owner where I could get some laundry done. He pointed to a boy, who could bring me to a house, who knew some people. In the house I met a young girl, who also seemed to know the way to someone who could wash lazy travellers’ clothes. All the time we were gathering people. House number 4 eventually produced a lady who would do it for me, so Claire and her band of followers returned to the village, proud of their day’s work.
Before retiring for the evening I met some people who told me they run canoe tours. With only food and water to occupy me I hurriedly signed up (not that there was anyone else to fill it up!). We took off early the next day, on a traditional canoe, which was super until we reached the raging rapids. We survived, and pulled over to ‘borrow’ a few oranges from trees. Being the ‘really, really tall one’ (people like pointing that out) I was given the job of jumping up to pull them out of the trees while the guy who came with us used his massive sword to cut them. Best oranges ever!
El Castillo prepared me for life in Nicaragua. To live here one must not think of things like electricity and water as important items. They are merely luxuries we get some evenings and on weekends. So I sat in my little wooden room, in the dark, with no water contemplating my trip. Wondering what the hell I was going to do for the next few months. Solo traveling is fun when you want to go somewhere no one else goes, but it can get weird when because no one else goes there, you start making conversation with dogs.
So I decided to head back upriver and found a boat about to make the 15 hour journey across the Lake of Nicaragua to a place called Grananda. That city got loads of space in the Lonely Planet so I figured lots of people must be there. I was on a mission. Not quite sure what I was looking for, but it had to involve me doing something, and preferably with other people.
Police check number 1:
Tags: 6 - Nicaragua, nicaragua, Travel
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