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Published: April 28th 2009
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Rather exhaustedly and with little ceremony we left El Zopilote for the 2pm bus to Altagracia joined by two Argentineans whose names we never knew, Silvia, and of course, Pollon. Happily we left our big bags with Silvia and Luca, due to return in a week or so. In Altagracia we found a man to repair my broken sandals and hung around aimlessly with the Argentineans until we caught a surprisingly pricey mini bus, driven by a boy who looked about 8 years old, to the port. There we bought the penultimate first class tickets for the ferry to San Carlos and psyched ourselves up for a night on a ferry in our new hammocks we had just bought from the Peñas Blancas border.
Once on the ferry, however, we found that all available hammock spots had been taken. The boat had come from Granada and was already very busy. We managed to find ourselves a good spot atop of a still slightly sticky white painted box and were quite comfortable aside from the constant threat of James rolling off the box in his sleep and into the sea. It was probably the best non-hammock spot however and the sea spray
kept us cool in our slightly too warm sleeping bags.
Eventually, and later than expected, we arrived in San Carlos and found that we had missed the connecting boat to San Juan del Norte (now officially called San Juan del Nicaragua as it is actually south of Nicaragua and probably named by the Costa Ricans with whom there is a continual dispute over who owns the stretch of river. Everyone still calls it del Norte). It was here that our true adventure began.
We managed to find a panga rapido, or fast boat, to El Castillo where the San Juan del Norte boat would wait for us and in our rush to get on the boat sadly forgot to bid farewell to our Argentinean friends. When we got there we were informed the boat was full. It was a remarkably small and ill-equipped boat for the 10 hour journey but once we were informed that we could get on (although no one had actually got off) we crowded on with the rest of them and seemed that James was one of only a few who didn’t have a proper seat.
Life jackets were distributed and we dutifully life-jacketed
up, as it were, and at long last the boat was pushed off. We all tried to get comfortable for the long journey ahead as the boat slowly pulled out. Within minutes a loud scraping bang and we had hit a rock in amongst the rapids. Soon the screaming of Nica women and children took over the sounds of the boat filling with water and the boat began listing quite dramatically as the driver attempted to steer us through the rapids and over to the river bank. He successfully got us to shore and there was a correspondingly mad rush to disembark. My efforts to let the children off first were very much thwarted by fear of those on board.
We sat on the bank by the army quarters for several hours awaiting information. Eventually, we all boarded a different boat and just before setting off thought to ask when we would arrive. We disembarked for the final time on hearing that we would stop in a few hours, the boat would be moored and there we would sleep until the following morning when the boat would continue to San Juan del Norte, possibly arriving at around 10 the
The rapids that ruined our trip
..although not that of the crazy kayakers going through them next morning. The return boat left at 4.30am the next morning. We decided against this and so there we were, in tiny little El Castillo, for an entire week with very little money and very little to do, which actually suited us perfectly.
We found a nice cheap clean hospedaje and spent a week slowly breaking ourselves into the travelling lifestyle. We had several pleasant picnic lunches by or in the castle up on the hill overlooking the rapids and small town. One evening we went on a caiman tour and saw very few caimans, which I was glad about when we discovered ‘seeing’ involved lifting the poor creatures out of the water which challenged my conscience somewhat. The only other ‘touristy’ thing we did was a trip to a nearby tourist reserve. There we saw the tiny red frogs (commonly known as dart frogs) which have a fever inducing poison on their backs and were used to poison darts in Mayan times. We also saw giant ants, spider monkeys, parrots and paraqueets, amazing vines which had torn trees apart (and suspended half trees in mid air), medicinal plants were pointed out and a vast many other things which
our limited vocabulary didn’t pick up. Other than that we did very little other than read, sleep or play cards. Oh, and James made himself a rather impressive fishing rod out of two twigs, a hook and too little line and unsuccessfully attempted to fish against the rapids.
We spent our last night before catching the ferry back to Ometepe in San Carlos. There we had a nice meal in a smart restaurant which accepted visa. Well, it seemed nice until the next morning when we were sitting at the medical centre speaking to the doctor about James’ dodgy guts and fever. It took a good 4 days until James was back to normal again and he very rarely gets sick. So much for posh expensive restaurants! The one positive of the day was that we were able to string our hammocks up on the ferry back and got a decent hotel room in Altagracia on our late return.
We spent several days back in Ometepe staying in Paul and Gaia’s spare room and luxuriating in the fact that we could spend time together in the place which we had both grown so fond of. It was a
very strange feeling when we came to leave for the last time.
We went to Chico Largo, checked into the hostel there, and then took a pleasant stroll down the beach where we were excited to find wild chillies which we picked and packed up with our food stuffs for later. The next day we left Ometepe for the last time taking the ferry from Chaco Verde to Rivas and from there a bus to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua’s most popular tourist destination (especially for surfers).
San Juan was a bit of a shock to the system, very westernised and holiday resort like, but actually quite a nice change. We sunned ourselves on its main beach on the first day and the following day took a taxi to a nearby beach ‘Playa Marsella’ and had a very pleasant day swimming and sunbathing (only slightly marred by my now dodgy stomach).
The next morning the alarm sounded at 4.15 (although we were both more or less awake after a rather sleepless night on an ant ridden bed) and we made our way to the bus stop and began our journey to Costa Rica
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