This morning, we woke up and ate gallo pinto for breakfast. I love that dish--especially with Natillo and Salsa Lizano. Abner came in the night before and we left before him in the morning. We crossed the Sarapiqui and checked out with the Costa Rican police and then again across the Rio San Juan to check in again with the Nicaraguan army. It was quite a pain in the ass, but we had to do it their way.
Without really meaning to, we busted ass to "Delta" by around 11:00 or 11:30. Delta was 22 kilometers from where we had camped at the mouth of the Saraquipi. It was there that we had our "moment of truth"--it was the last place we could get our exit stamp from Nicaragua. At Delta, the river splits. The Rio San Juan proper continued northeast in Nicaragua to San Juan del Norte. The Rio Colorado flows east with the majority of the current to Barra del Colorado in Costa Rica. This had been a point of stress for me the entire trip. In idle moments where Graham and I were not talking while paddling, I found myself thinking about this problem. But all in all, I seemed to have shrugged off my habitual fear of borders and the crossing that inevitably follows. We had so many encounters with government officials that were good natured and helpful that I never seemed to get as worked up as I normally do.
Anyway, when we arrived at the puesto at "Delta", the Nicaraguan immigration officer absolutely did not want to give us an exit stamp. Absolutely not. Imagining having that power. At that point, we were as powerless as a pair of canoeists trying to paddle upstream. He didn't want to give us the exit stamp mostly because there is no official Costa Rican immigration on the other side of the river. This means we would be entering Costa Rica illegally, like thousands of Nicas do every year. But we explained to him our situation and and he eventually complied, saying, "I'm going to give you the exit stamp, wish you luck, then wash my hands of it." That was nice of him. It was also nice of us to give him $10 each. Now we can only hope that once in Limon we can get an entrance stamp into Costa Rica. If not, we may have to go to Los Chiles again and get the entrance stamp there, because it is one of the two "official" places to cross the border.
We took the Rio Colorado split, passed the Costa Rican police checkpoint silently and with stealth, and continued east toward Barra del Colorado and the Caribbean. It took us the rest of the day to reach our goal. The river dropped rather quickly and we arrived in town and quickly paddled to the ocean to complete our source-to-sea journey. Man, what a feeling. It's the penultimate sensation of completion. We were looking for a place to get out before hitting the breakers at the rivermouth when we saw a HUGE crocodile that must have been 15 feet long. It scared the shit out of me. Needless to say, we were very carfeul when getting out of the boat to check out the beach.
Out in the rivermouth, there was a number of fishing charters with rich Americans, invariably speaking in a drawn out Texan accent, trying to catch the BIG TARPON. It was a bit weird to hear English again. It was the first native English I had spoken since we got to Central America. Weird. We camped on the beach at MINAE (Costa Rica's Ministry of Natural Resources), which was about 2K from town. Graham set up camp while I walked into town to try and call Oscar and organize our pickup in a few days, get some more food, and find us a panga ride to Tortuguero because Graham has started to react very poorly to the sun from his antibiotics. I got back, and we ate the normal rice, beans, and veggies over the fire. We celebrated with a couple nips of Flor de Cana tonight.
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