Rolling Down the River

Rolling Down the River

Fortunately, Minor had booked us seats two days ago on the Rapido (express panga) to San Juan de Nicaragua because the  panga was totally full, not counting kids, who seem to be able to ride in the same seat with their moms up to about the age of 10 or 12.  Apparently the moms' life jackets are sufficiently buoyant to keep the kids afloat in case of an accident that puts us in the water because although each other passenger was required to have a jacket, the kids weren't.

The Río San Juan below Bartola is a tale of two sides.  On the northern side is the Indio Maiz Reserve of Nicaragua, one of the more pristine rainforests of Central America.  On the southern side is Costa Rica, a continual display of clear-cuts, erosion, farming, and heavy machinery.  I believe that Nicaragua began complaining about the erosion's effect on the river some years back, and Costa Rica has erected some green cloth erosion control panels in places, but there seem to be fresh, bare hillsides in many places.

Although I have seen several osprey and a treeful of howlers, the superabundant waterfowl of the river directly below Lake Cocibolca has thinned significantly into just the occasional kingfisher or giant egret or cormorant or heron.    We are apparently also coming down into caiman and crocodile country, although we have yet to spot one.

The trip down to Boca San Carlos, where we would have spent the third night of the kayak tour had we continued past Castillo, took two hours by express panga, a ratio that would have indicated at the minimum some 12 - 14 hours in a kayak, given that the same panga took 1 1/2 hrs. to get to Castillo from San Carlos (our starting point....which is a completely different location from Boca de San Carlos), and it took us 14 hrs. of paddling to get to Castillo.