Today we started our trip "en realidad". Last night, I went out in La Fortuna with some of the guides from Canoa Adventura (the company that is renting us the boat) and had a blast. I was the only gringo in the bar-it was fantastic. Also, I have become hopelessly enfatuated with Marizella, a girl that works at Canoa Aventura. She is so beautiful and moreover, I'd be hard-pressed to find a nicer person on this earth.
Oscar, the owner of Canoa Aventura, gave us a great deal. Those guys are the tits. This morning, our new Tico friend, Marlon, took us to Los Chiles, CR, and we put in finally, to el Rio Frio, which crosses into Nicaragua.
There is a little station on the border where Nicaraguan soldiers were stationed to see who was crossing the river. They stopped us and asked for our papers, the "zarpe", to be exact. This was a little piece of paper that would give us permission to be traveling on the river, if we had had one. Which, of course, we didn't. How were we supposed to know? We ended up hanging out on the border-which was nothing more than a dock and a barracks for 6 soldiers or so, for two hours, waiting out the rain and chilling with the Nicaraguan soldiers. Their names were Hernan, Arbelo, Darwin, all just kids out of high school, except their boss, who was visibly trying to bear a resemblance to Che Guevara. The look didn't work, but the intimadation did. It was a bit chilling trying to hold a conversation with a dude holding a loaded AK-47, who happened to also be speaking the most uneducated Spanish I had heard yet. The funny thing was, these guys were nice. I didn't expect that at all. They hinted that if we sent some money (to pay for their cigarette resupply) with the next panga going upriver, they would let us pass. And so it was with my first unofficial bribing of officials. They gave us a bunch of delicious oranges to take with us. The peel is green, which totally reverses all my previous perceptions of the fruit we call "orange". I wish that they would have let me take their photo. Strict rules in Nicaragua.
Oscar, the owner of Canoa Aventura, gave us a great deal. Those guys are the tits. This morning, our new Tico friend, Marlon, took us to Los Chiles, CR, and we put in finally, to el Rio Frio, which crosses into Nicaragua.
There is a little station on the border where Nicaraguan soldiers were stationed to see who was crossing the river. They stopped us and asked for our papers, the "zarpe", to be exact. This was a little piece of paper that would give us permission to be traveling on the river, if we had had one. Which, of course, we didn't. How were we supposed to know? We ended up hanging out on the border-which was nothing more than a dock and a barracks for 6 soldiers or so, for two hours, waiting out the rain and chilling with the Nicaraguan soldiers. Their names were Hernan, Arbelo, Darwin, all just kids out of high school, except their boss, who was visibly trying to bear a resemblance to Che Guevara. The look didn't work, but the intimadation did. It was a bit chilling trying to hold a conversation with a dude holding a loaded AK-47, who happened to also be speaking the most uneducated Spanish I had heard yet. The funny thing was, these guys were nice. I didn't expect that at all. They hinted that if we sent some money (to pay for their cigarette resupply) with the next panga going upriver, they would let us pass. And so it was with my first unofficial bribing of officials. They gave us a bunch of delicious oranges to take with us. The peel is green, which totally reverses all my previous perceptions of the fruit we call "orange". I wish that they would have let me take their photo. Strict rules in Nicaragua.
I am amazed at how much wildlife there has been. I don't think we paddled more than 5 minutes without hearing the abrasive, guttural grunt of howler monkeys. We saw caimans, iguanas, spider monkeys, howlers, and so many birds that I can't even try to remember.
So, the fish are here. In the thousands. Fish were busting everywhere as we were paddling, jumping out of the water and making a big production out of their dinner. I am so excited to start fishing tommorrow. I think we'll catch a lot of snook.
The Rio Frio flows into the southeast corner of Lake Nicaragua, of which we met with the habitual afternoon rain. In the custom of the Cree, we left an offering of tobbacco, in hopes that the new river will be kind to us. San Carlos, Nicaragua is 2k across the mouth and at the egress of the San Juan. We got to San Carlos at 3.30 or 4 and had no problem with immigration, which was a relief. We are now officially in Nicaragua. We couldn't find Norman, the man from MARENA who was going to give us fishing licenses, so I guess we'll fish anyway, illegally, and discreetly. We went to the market and stocked up on food for the remainder of the trip--rice, beans, cookies, coffee, onion, apple, yuca, platanos, limon, chiles, tomatoes, and cornmeal, to cook our snook with.
We're staying at a hotel right on the river and a guy we just met at the local bar is watching the boat tonight-- I hope. I'm amazed at how wonderfully nice everyone is here. It seems like they actually want us to be here, and that they don't view us as a large dollar sign, as many people do in Costa Rica. Our waiter at dinner, whose name was "Willy", is a great guy--he gave us a bunch of fishing tips and information about the river. We're going to meet him in the morning for breakfast. I can't wait to go fishing tommorrow. We'll be in El Castillo in 2 days.
The difference between Nicaragua and Costa Rica is startling. Nicaragua is very poor, but I feel like the people are nicer and more genuine than in Costa Rica. Not that the Ticos are not that way. Willy let us store our canoe at his restaurant and he also offered to take us fishing. He told us a cool trick for catching tarpon-- catch some sardines in a net, then crush them in our hands and put our flies all in there, soaking up the smell of the baitfish. That way, the tarpon will smell the bait and be more prone to bite. Because the water is so murky, they say they hunt by smell more than sight. It may be harder to catch fish on a fly than we had thought.
The people here in San Carlos have faces that are happy even despite the civil war that devastated this area. A couple islands on the lake were totally destroyed. Lake Nicaragua is amazing- it is huge, backlit by volcanoes to the west, horizon to the north, Costa Rica to the south, and east.... the river. El Rio San Juan. For us right now, east means "the unknown". It has never had that kind of connotation for me, ever. Here the frontier is eastward.
The hotel is comfortable enough, pretty standard fare for San Carlos. Our room was $4 for the night.Wood platform beds with a thin, musty cushion. Toilets are nothing but a hole in the ground with a bucket of water next to the toilet used for "manual flushing". There is no shame, or room for it here. We love it. Graham was saying today that we exist and thrive, where other travelers stop short. San Carlos is definently not on the beaten track.
There are soldiers everywhere in Nicaragua. A little unsettling. I guess its a holdback from the civil war. While walking to the market, we saw some guys playing checkers with bottle caps. It started raining at 12.30, and didn't stop until after I went to sleep. We tried their rum, Flor de Caña. It is the best rum I have ever had. I need to bring a bottle back. Man, Nicaragua is amazing. Tommorrow, we'll wet our paddles on the San Juan and leave behind what civilization there is in this frontier border town.
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