Rio San Juan & El Castillo - Week 11

28th - 29th Nov

We were supposed to leave Omnetepe for Costa Rica on 28th but were enjoying Nicaragua (and it's prices!) a lot so decided to join Michael on a trip down to Rio San Juan on the Nicaraguan side of the border. I think we were drawn by the rumour of huge river shrimps...

It was a 10 hour ferry from Omnetepe across the lake to San Carlos so we stopped in Moyogalpa first so that Katie could use her best spanish to get some sea sickness pills from the remote little hospital (it worked - still amazed!). The ferry crossing was actually very smooth and we were pleasantly surprised. We got out the sleeping bags and even had a bit of sleep.

Not much in San Carlos, it was a very poor little shack town (although Michael, the most enthusiastic man in the world, loved it on arrival and went back to stay for a night after we left him!) but we had time for a nice cheap breakfast of gallo pinto (the staple beans and rice dish of Nicaragua) before the 3 hour boat up the river left for El Castillo.

View upstream at El Castillo

History lesson time!! Rio San Juan and El Castillo have important parts in British history. Long before the Panama Canal was built the easiest route from New York to San Francisco was down the Atlantic, into the Carribean, along the Rio San Juan into Lake Nicaragua, across a few miles of land by mule to the Pacific to catch a steamer upto San Francisco. This meant that Granada became a important (and rich) city and very tempting to pirates and the British. Many pirates managed to get to Granada past the spanish and plunder Granada, so the spanish decided to build forts along the banks of the Rio San Juan to defend Granada. El Castillo is one such place, where there are shallow rapids making easy targets of attacking ships. A young Nelson (captain at the time) attacked the fort here with 50 ships and 2000 men and was one of the few people successful in taking the fort and defeating the spanish here...

Imagine 2000 men attacking this little fort...

Now it is just a remote little village made up of shacks with blokes fishing in the river.

Its not called a rainforest for nothing...

On the first evening we were wandering down the street and saw a lot of locals (we were the only gringos for about 100km) grouped together. We went to investigate and a little alligator had made it's way up the dock and was just hanging around!

That night we found the famous river shrimps and, wowzers, they were HUGE and delicious!


Afterwards, we invited ourselves to a big party at the hotel in the village. We thought it looked like fun and that anyone could join in but it was actually a graduation party for all the 18 year olds that had just finished school! Got drunk then Michael dressed up as a pirate... Don't ask.

Perhaps it was the local rum made from little horses? (70p for 350 ml)