Carnival Acuatico and Last Days in San Carlos

Upon my return to San Carlos on Thursday I found the malecón (the waterfront) filled with tents for the carnival acuático (water carnival). The Carnival was an annual festival in San Carlos that brought people from all over the south of the country but also from as far away as Managua. Thursday was the setup day, Friday the carnival got going although the official day was Saturday. I took it easy on Thursday. Any amount of traveling in the heat and humidity with backpacks strapped to your back and front will take it out of you for the day. Plus, I figured the next couple of days would be chaotic with the festival going on.

It was also a good thing I got into town on Thursday because I might not have been able to get a room otherwise, much less at the hotel, Hotel Paraiso, that I’d made my home base for my stops in San Carlos. It was right on the main street near the malecón and it was upstairs with a balcony that looked out over Lake Nicaragua. Plus, I gotten to know the staff having stayed there a few times and spent a lot of time chatting with them, particularly Francisco, the 22-year-old student that worked nights.

The public area of Hotel Paraiso

The spiral staircase up to the rooms at Hotel Paraiso

Friday morning they had the stages set up and started testing the speakers at six in the morning. They definitely worked well. I should explain that when I say speakers I mean walls of speakers probably about 10 feet high and at least that wide. And it’s only loud enough if everyone in a 100 yard radius can feel the music. You can literally feel the vibrations from the music and the buildings shake from it as well. The tents were full of vendors selling everything from food to clothes, plastic toys to handmade local artisan crafts. There were even more vendors wandering the streets with baskets of food, cigarettes, candy, sunglasses, hammocks, mosquito nets, belts, watches, pop, and juices sold in plastic bags taped closed with a straw poking out the top.

The sea of tents for the festival from the balcony of the hotel.

I wandered around for a while checking out the tents and then saw a menu that had some traditional Nicaragua food offered so I stopped in to try some vigaron. Vigaron is chunks of boiled yucca topped with fresh cooked pork rinds and a cabbage salad. I enjoyed it although it isn’t something I could eat everyday but even for Nicaraguans is more of a special occasion dish. The pork rinds are quite delicious but quite rich. It was also the first yucca I had in the country which was quite a treat because yucca is one of my favorite foods in Central America. It’s a root vegetable from these huge plants. It’s rather like a potato but generally more firm, even when cooked. It has a thick skin that you have to cut off with a knife before you cook it. I went back to the same place that evening and had some amazing fresh ceviche, although I forgot to ask what kind of fish they used to make it.

Afterward I hung out and had a few beers from the booth right in front of the hotel entrance and talked with Francisco, the night guy at the hotel, and Julio, the clown, all decked out in his clown costume because he was helped with some of the festivities such as dance competitions for the kids.

Francisco

Julio, the clown

The next day, Saturday, was the big day for the carnival and it kicked off with lots of dancing from local kids decked out in often skimpy costumes. This was followed by a parade of boats coming up the river and out into the lake. I watched from the hotel balcony. It was made up of boats from many of the municipalities around San Carlos and various government organizations as well. The boats were decorated much as floats would be in a regular parade with decorations from plants and animals to people and buildings that represented whoever was sponsoring the boat. Many also had music and dancers performing on them as well. The rest of the day was filled with boating competitions, dancing competitions, and music. The highlight of the evening for the Nicaraguans was a live telecast of a boxer they call “El Chocolate” winning a fight in the United States.

Sunday morning it was time to head out of the south but because so many people were in town and it was Sunday it was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. Instead of a direct bus to Managua I ended up taking three buses. The first bus was a chicken bus heading to a town Northeast of where I wanted to go. Three hours later they dropped us off and told us to cross the road to another intersection where we would catch a bus coming from their town that would take us to the next stop up the road. Luckily we only had to wait about five minutes before the bus came and then it was about a 30 minute trip into the town of Juigalpa. Here I lucked out and got the last seat on an air-conditioned express bus to Managua. In all it took me 30 minutes less to get back to Managua than it had taken me to get there to begin with on one bus. I grabbed a taxi at the bus station and headed back to Italians place for a couple days.