Advertisement
Published: February 28th 2022
Edit Blog Post
I was excited to finally fulfill a goal of crossing Lake Nicaragua by boat from Granada to San Carlos, all the way at the other end at the mouth of the Rio San Juan.
The boat ride was a trip in itself and took over 15 hours from start to finish, with a long stop in Ometepe due to the loading of bananas by lots of human hands (and lots of bananas). Before getting on the boat we had a bit of a day buying plastic hammocks in Rivas and going back to a hostel (Pascal knew from before) who were super friendly and nice enough to let us keep our bags for the day and relax in the courtyard while it was raining, and refilling our water bottle.
After we got to the chocolate museum and had a short tour of the biggest hotel in Granada (and quite magnificent in fact). Of course we tried the chocolate in drink form and got some pep for the big trip.
When we climbed on the boat, which was two stories and had a DJ, big speakers and open deck plus indoor seating on the top floor, plus a simple
food kiosk, seating hall with a small TV on the bottom floor. A nice military man helped me and Pascal tie up our hammocks for a wavy and splashy night outside, full of beautiful stars in the sky.
We met a couple of Germans and an Englishman who were making the full journey to San Carlos, the rest got off early in the ever -so-popular Ometepe.
We passed a pretty frigid but good night, and got a couple of winks of sleep, woken up by the DJ's morning set.
We arrived in San Carlos, a lesser visited Port that connects the passengers arriving by boat from all regions in the Rio San Juan. Many Nicas we were to learn later use the proximity to get to Costa Rica to work, I guess because these border towns might be lesser used by the tourists? From discussions I had it seemed like they were doing jobs like electrician, farming, boat repair.
SOLENTINAME ARCHIPELAGO
So our next destination was the Solentiname Islands. I didn't really know what to expect from this place, I only knew it was an archipelago in the southeastern part of the Lake with artisans
and not many people. So we got another boat at 11 AM after wandering a bit around San Carlos (found a delightful coffee shop up the hill from the port to hide from the rain).
This boat was much smaller, like a big speed boat with passenger seats. The driver in the back watches the signaling of another guy in the front who uses his hands to say which way to turn. The trip took about 2 hours and we got right away spoken to by one of the captains who said he had a room for rent in the island of San Fernando, right in the middle of the Archipelago. He was willing to drop his price quite a bit (20$ per night to 16$ for the two if us), and the place turned out to be gorgeous with a couple of hammocks to watch the sunset from. I fell asleep pretty quickly, so tired from the journey.
We found out that these islands have no cars or roads for that matter. You are lucky to find paved walkways. That's when I wished I had closed toed shoes because the ants do bite! No mosquitoes though. We
walked around for a couple of hours and probably met everyone on the island. No I'm joking but the place is like living in a botanical garden.
Day two we got to kayaking in the lake, our mission was to get to the other main islands, MancarrĂ³n and Venada, all in one day. We went first to MancarrĂ³n, the biggest. You can call it the capital of Solentiname. They have a pretty long paved pathway, maybe it will take you a half an hour to walk around. There is where we found Nicas in their art workshops hand carving wooden animals and hand painting them. Some of them said Costa Rica..
We came across a really large parrot so naturally we wanted to get closer for a picture, and met two nice women painting. We had a pretty long chat with them about this and that and figured we would take the boat back to San Carlos the following day with one of them and her son (small world over there). We got to eating some fried fish and rice and pineapple juice then we were on our way.
The journey over to La Venada was quite
a but harder, so we didnt get to do much exploring on this island. Plus my feet were full of ant bites and I was scared to get any more.
PAPACHURRO / GUATUZCO RESERVE
After a really early boat ride starting before the sun came up back to San Carlos, we headed back out the same way we came to Papachurro located in the Guatuzco reserve. Unlike in Canada or the US, the reserves here can contain little pueblos, like this one, where many Nicas come to cross the border to Costa Rica to work or visit family. To date we have seen many military bases and checkpoints.
We had a night tour organized by the Caiman Cabanas, and saw the river at night, filled with birds sleeping in trees, caimans of course (baby alligators), and their scary beadie red eyes when seen from afar, spider monkeys, iguanas (the males are punks because they wear mohawks), toads.
EL CASTILLO
We got back to San Carlos for the third time and took another boat to El Castillo, located down the river San Juan, about half way. They have a restored fort, built to stop the pirates
of the Carribean, from the 16th century. Inside the fort is now a little public library (cheers for heritage protection). The museum sums up well the history of the town, and all the different endeavors to build a canal by the Americans and French (they should update it with the Chinese).
There is a chocolatera and were guided by two young brothers, 9 and 7 years old, who explained a bit about chocolate making. There is a fermentation step, a drying step, shelling and grinding (by hand at this place).
Tomorrow we plan to continue down the river to San Juan del Norte (which is in the east, while San Juan del Sur is in the west!)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.042s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 19; dbt: 0.0199s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb