San Carlos, Nicaragua

At the end of our overnight, 14 hour - come 18 hour - ferry ride we arrived early morning to the southern shore of lake Ometepe at a town called San Carlos. San Carlos is the gateway to the Rio San Juan on the Ometepe side, and is a town with a lot of history. During our time there, Bryan, Erin, Pete, Maggie, and Rigel enjoyed the local sights including, on land, an old fort infested with very hard working leaf-cutter ants.

Leaf cutter ants haulting flower and leaf parts back to their hive

Boats tied up in San Carlos, Nicaragua

We also paid 100 american for a 4 hour boat tour of the area that included an hour on the Rio Frio and a couple hours on the Rio San Juan. We made it right up to a new bridge that will link the east side of lake Ometepe with Costa Rica. The strange thing is, all the markers on the bridge indicate it was Japanese funded. The local guide said they traded fishing rights for a bridge. The devastation we saw in Bahia de Concepcion on the Baja California came up in my mind, and i really hope the Japanese refrain from scouring the seabed of kelp and coral setting the whole area back 20 years this time.

Sign denoting the partnership betwen Japan and Nicaragua. What happens to the bridge if a canal is built?

The boat tour was fantastic though, and we saw so many birds from the melodious blackbird grackles we've been seeing since Mexico, to innumerable varieties of fly catcher, king fisher, tiger herons, parakeets, and various and sundry others. On land, we saw a tethered caiman crocodilis, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, and white faced monkeys, as well as so called jesus lizards that run on the water's surface and a few tortoise husks on the river bank.

My hand is a lot closer to the camera than the 18 inch long headed crocodile yearling in front of me.

We didn't have to go so far to enjoy a show as our hotel hada wild, grown over back yard that featured many creatures from two foot lizards bobbing our their mating calls to a tortiose that wandered to close and caught the attention of some other hotel guests. For $4, we bought a couple 375 mL bottles of 5 year Flor de Caña rum and learned to enjoy the sweet liquor alongside tasty mangos from the market.
Unfortunately, the airport decided to run the airplane to Managua only on two inconvenient days of the week, so dad had to take a bus back to Managua, preferring to do so Thursday night for his flight 13 hours later. While loitering around town, however, we stumbled across a drama unfolding above a local hostal. A sloth was in the power lines above the building while a fellow tried to keep him busy or bring him down while the Bomberos were enroute and the locals gathered and looked on.