El Castillo and Back to San Carlos

I woke up at 7 the next morning having planned with the woman in charge of the hotel to have breakfast at 7:30. It was my first breakfast with gallo pinto (rice and beans cooked together), fried eggs, cheese, tortillas, and café con leche. It was quite good. However, I had decided to another hotel that would be $5 a night cheaper and have a private bathroom. I felt a little bad about it but if I wasn’t going to have internet I might as well pay less and have my own bathroom. On my way I ran into a family (mom, dad, 2 kids, and grandma) from Oregon who were heading out for a day tour to a national park nearby. I found a place downriver that fit the bill nicely. It was right on the river, actually more accurately partially over the river on stilts. There was even a view looking up at the Spanish fort that I had read so much about.

View of the fort from my hotel.

It was drizzling out on and off but I decided to head up to the fort to check it out anyway. It was much larger than I thought it would be and had a decent museum with some pre-Colombian relics and a lot of big boards talking about the history of the area and the fort. My favorite story from the history of the fort is about Rafaela Herrera. Her father was the commander of the fort but had died from a wound shortly before 2,000 British soldiers sent from Jamaica were sent to try to take over the town of Granada all the way up the river and across Lake Nicaragua in 1762. It was viewed as a strategic city because you could take boats all the way to Granada and then there was a short overland to the Pacific coast. The British troops had done quite well, taking all the fortifications along the river until they arrived at El Castillo. However, Rafaela rallied her father’s troops and they managed to drive off the British ships sending them scurrying back down the river in defeat. Some versions of the story have her doing this in her nightgown, but somehow I think that might be an embellishment on what is already a good story. I spent about an hour wandering around the fort. The view up and down the river is spectacular and you can see the rapids that run right in front of town that also gave the British a lot of trouble.

Sorry for the poor video quality. I had to edit them to make them smaller and I lost some of the resolution when I did. I'll try to post them elsewhere as well.

Leading up to the fort.

Flying the Nicaraguan flag. You can see why they called it The Castle.

The full name is The Fort of the Pure, Clean & Immaculate Conception. That's  not a mouthful at all!

The archways near the entrance and you can just make out a couple of old cannons pointing out the windows.

Just a pretty view. Every one here gets around by boat. This one is like a canoe (granted this one has an outboard motor). I love the horse in the background chilling under the tree.

The view downriver from the fort.

Later I went out to lunch and ended up running into the family from Oregon and they invited me to join them. Turns out they are from McMinnville and have been in Nicaragua for almost 3 months. The first two months they lived with a family in a village and took Spanish classes through some sort of Spanish immersion program. Now they were traveling around the country. They had an 8-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son and said that the 8-year-old had learned the most Spanish.They were having lunch with their guide from the excursion to the National Park and we were asking him about El Castillo. There are literally no cars in the area and the only way to get to the town is by boat. Or if you were feeling adventurous you could walk an hour and a half to Costa Rica and try to hitch on the dirt roads over there.

I was going to go up to the butterfly farm in the afternoon but it started raining so I holed up at the hotel and read a book for most of the afternoon venturing out for a little walk in between showers in the afternoon where I ran into the couple that had been on the boat with me. Turns out they were from Germany and the girl had volunteered up in the north of Nicaragua for a few months working with handicapped persons in some capacity, then her boyfriend had joined her and they were traveling for a bit. I ran into them again at dinnertime at the same restaurant as the night before.

The local Catholic church. I thought it was really lovely.

The locals called this a Martin Kingfisher. This dude was hanging out on a boat in front of my hotel.

That night as I was talking to Mom on the phone it began to pour rain and the wind was blowing like crazy. I had to retreat to my room to escape it. It proceeded to rain pretty hard and blow most of the night. When you’re in a house on stilts over the water this can be a little terrifying, particularly when every now and again it feels like something bumps against the stilts and shakes the whole building. However, when I woke up in the morning, the river was hardly any higher than it had been when I went to bed the night before.

The lightning from the storm that drove me into my room later on.

My room at the hotel. Not much floor space so the computer and the water purifier are on the bed.

But it was time to head out for somewhere new so I hopped on a boat back upriver to San Carlos where I stayed for a couple days, taking advantage of the Wi-Fi at the hotel I was staying at and trying to decide where to head next. The highlight being talking to the guy who works overnight here, Francisco and his friend Julio. Francisco is 22 and a student as well as a musician and writer. He’s definitely got the starving artist vibe and he had me read some of his writing which was actually quite good, mainly questioning the meaning of life. His buddy Julio works as a clown and does parties and festivals and such. He says he loves what he does and showed me a picture of himself all made up.

I got a nice man sitting in front of me to take my picture on the boat ride.

I just love these houses tucked up on the shores of the river, particularly pretty with the egret flying overhead.