The film below shows our flight from San Carlos to Managua (the plane came to pick us up!), the beaches near Aserradores and our camping hike up El Hojo volcano. For the record, when you’ve hiked alone for a few hours and you find yourselves standing over a live volcano vent (that’s as deep as a few hundred wells) that is spewing steam and sulphur (hence making it feel like some kind of creature), is a very, very profound experience.
Author: ralph
Ralph has just hung a washing line across the central square of San Carlos. To me, magic.
Proof that Ralph is magic (El Castillo).
The girls are independent – eg. they will just hang out at a table, doing ‘stuff’ in in between times. So I am each time surprised that they still ask our permission for some small thing – “How many toffees can I have?” and that our word is still law. At the same time they can totally ignore (well, ignore is too weak a word for it – rather “exist in their own parallel space and time“) our requests, if they have a better idea.
Extremely lovely brothers Juan and Manuel took turns guiding us, in our two days in el Castillo. Juan told us there are 25 Juans in El Castillo (population 2000). Many have distinguishing nicknames – charming Juan, Naughty Juan, Healer Juan. He was Squirrel Juan (short straw!), because of his (formerly) bushy hair.
We named Mila after Naughty Juan – Mila Bandida.
We packed in a lot of stuff – two fishing trips + swimming in the river upstream + a canoe trip + a guided hike through the Indio-Maiz rain forest reserve + nighttime boat trip to try (and fail) to find caimans (smallish crocodiles). It rained a lot in between and during.
None of us had walked in a rain forest before. We saw two extraordinary birds – a manakin and a two grey necked wood rails – as well as tiny poisonous frogs. Manuel broke into a small Assassin Ant nest – quel hombre! and told us that one bite will make you very sick, two may even kill you. We felt small and squelchy in the mud. Mila’s boots (rented) had holes in them. Manuel commented that our girls are very strong.
Lisa: It is strange to say but our perfectly clean, fresh wonderful hotel in El Castillo, run by Hemma, has a big cocodrilo (actually a caiman – smaller and apparently muy timide relative but who can resist the word cocodrilo?) hanging out under its riverside stilts. When the girls first saw him from our bedroom window, I ran to the deck and found the words to shout in perfect Spanish (told you it was latent) to some boys swimming in the river, that a big crocodile was bathing nearby. Much laughter, no corrective action taken.
Lisa: Travelers fall in love with Nica and her people. This moment in Nicaragua’s development is really precious – accessible but not overdeveloped. We felt this very much at El Castillo.
Trying to describe this moment…
The vegetation here is mas o menos untouched and unbelievably gorgeous. Toucans, parrots, flycatchers, kingfishers, swallows and lots of noisy Montezuma Oropendola! (Ralph: Feels like Maun felt (frontieresque) in the mid-1980’s)
There are enough fish in the river to feed all the locals and tourists (selling of fish is prohibited) and make Ralph a very very happy hombre. We ate our own caught fish for breakfast and supper tonight.
The transport infrastructure is basic but improving. And – no roads to get here yet = no cars.
The paved walkways are cleaned of poo. Pigs are tied up and dog breeds are, somewhat surreally, recognisable.
Although there is a sound tourist infrastructure, pretty much no English is spoken by the locals. Having to speak Spanish makes a huge difference. btw Bea talks in her sleep. Although it wakes us all most nights, at least we know from her exclamations- she’s started to dream in Spanish! And sometimes I feel as if I have the whole Spanish language in me, ready to pop up and out one day, perfectly formed, like a turtle from muddy water.
People have been so good to us, so…personable (is there a better word…how low our expectations that to be a person is commendable these days.) There is not enough money flowing in for grubby, grabby materialism to manifest yet.
We’re at the red X on the map below.
Obviously it’s not uncomplicated – rows of quite sweet round red Claro! satellite dishes all face east on the rooftops, pretty much the exact direction Spanish canons would have faced to ward off pirates from the Caribbean a few hundred years ago. Parrots perch on the big satellite tower in the picturesque cemetery on the top of the hill.
El Castillo is the last town before the Rio San Juan meets the gnarly Caribbean. The pressures of development are pretty inevitable, forging their course downstream. In the meantime…we beat on, boats against the current…? (My spatial awareness is not great – god knows I struggle with currents, upstreams and downstreams… but…you know…)
Dunno of this will go through as we have a bad connection. Not poss to add photos.
We spent a few days in the exceptional Solentiname Archipelago.
Now we’re in an extraordinary place called El Castillo – halfway down the Rio San Juan. Look it up on Google maps.
It’s a tiny riverside pueblo (village) below a small Spanish fortification (built in 1675). We’re 3 hrs boat-ride from the closest road (no cars here).
Nica became independent in 1821. Prior to that, this town used to protect the river, i.e. when a Spanish Colony, enemies (British pirates) would sail from the Caribbean, up the Rio San Juan in steamships. There are 5 sets of rapids downstream from here. The ships would be emptied, and teams of slaves (from Africa) would haul the boat up the rapids and then reload. The journey would continue to San Carlos, then across Lago de Nicaragua (which is a volcanic and muddy reprise of Lake Malawi), and the sail NW to sack Granada. They’d live with their booty on Isla Ometepe, evetually shedding pirate status.
We’re just above the border with Costa Rica. We’re in a wooden stilted hostel on the edge of an orange-brown river. There is a crocodile under the floorboards as I write this. We’re about to eat a fish for super that Bea caught about 2 hrs ago. Everyone very happy. We’re going fishing again tomorrow again at sunrise, and in the afternoon doing a boat trip and hike in the Indo-Maiz National Park a la Mosquito Coast.
Lots of new birds: 30+ that we’ve never seen before. Tomorrow night we plan to go on a night caiman trip. Very much like the Okavango – we’ll find them by spotlight and catch small ones to examine and then release.
Lisa: It’s three hours on a long low ferry from San Carlos down the Rio San Juan to El Castillo.
Ralph and I love the physical moving from place to place. We first realised this common passion on honeymoon in Japan, and that was also the last time I drew fellow travelers. I have to draw people from the back, or extremely side on, to avoid myself being seen. Amazing how much expression you can get without a nose, eyes or mouth – really!
