La Ruta del Agua: tourism initiative to promote Nicaragua’s southern waterways

The boat is king on Nicaragua's Rio San Juan--even this one, with a 1-cylinder Lister engine

Navigating the Rio San Juan in Southern Nicaragua today, you won’t see much traffic. There are the local fisherman, a few sportfishermen, and the small boats that ferry local residents from very isolated towns to marginally less isolated ones.

But in centuries past, the river was a busy thoroughfare. Spanish conquistadors sailed upriver to Lake Nicaragua and settled the rich colonial city of Granada. Pirates made the same trip to plunder the wealth of what became the richest colonial territory in Central America. And in the mid-1800s, up to 10,000 people a year took the Nicaragua shortcut from the East Coast of the U.S. to the California Gold Rush, avoiding the long sail around the tip of South America. (Travelers also used Panama as a cut-off point, though the canal wasn’t yet built.)

Frank Ochomogo, local project director of the Ruta del Agua tourist initiative

Frank Ochomogo, local Project Director of a $14,720 million tourism initiative they’re calling “La Ruta del Agua,” would like to see the river regain some its former traffic, but this time from travelers who come for the nature, culture, sportfishing, and adventure rather than for the plunder or the quickest route to somewhere else.

I had breakfast with Frank in early December at Philippe Tisseaux’s Esquina del Lago lodge, and he explained that the initiative intends to develop tourism and infrastructure in the area of Southern Nicaragua defined by three bodies of water: The Caribbean Sea, the Rio San Juan, and Lake Nicaragua. The money for the project comes from a loan for the Interamerican Bank.

Although the project is on the books as a tourism development initiative, one of its major components—the improvement of infrastructure—will benefit local residents at least as much as tourists. Right now, the road from Managua to San Carlos—at 15,000 people, one of the bigger towns in the area—is only 300 km, but take up to 15 hours on the bus because the poor state of the road.

“We’re putting our house in order,” says Frank. “So that we can invite people in.”

Diving off the new San Carlos dock

The bulk of the money ($12 of the almost $15 million) is slated for infrastructure improvement. Besides road repairs, there are 11 new docks planned in communities throughout the Ruta del Agua area, and 8 new immigration posts to be built, each at the juncture of the San Juan and another river that feeds into it.

The entire waterfront area of San Carlos has already received a major face lift, with a new dock, a riverside promenade, a new immigration post under construction, and even a brand-new ATM machine that, marvels Tisseaux, “actually works and actually has money in it! That’s huge, you have no idea.”  There is also a bridge planned from Costa Rica to Nicaragua—from Santa Fe, they told me, though I couldn’t find that town on any map and couldn’t picture where a bridge connecting the two countries would go.

Smaller pieces of the funding pie will go to promotion and low-interest loans to local tourism-related businesses so that they can expand their capacity.

A tributary of the Rio San Juan near the Costa Rica / Nicaragua border

The Ruta del Agua area is rife with nature reserves–Guatuso, Vida Silvestre San Juan, and Indo Maiz—and cultural and historical treasures like the Solentiname Archipeligo, known for its painters and artisans, and El Castillo, a Spanish fort built in 1675 to guard against pirates.

Tisseaux, French-born and now a Nicaraguan resident, helps sportfishermen chase town the river’s mammoth tarpon. He also does a lot of reading about the history of his adopted country. “About 100,000 people came up the Rio San Juan on their way from the eastern United States to the Gold Rush in California,” he says.  “That means that a good portion of people descended from the 49ers had a relative that passed through the area.”

One of the travelers who made the trip was Mark Twain, who described the area as consisting of “dark grottos, fairy festoons, tunnels, temples, columns, pillars, towers, pilasters, terraces, pyramids, mounds, domes, walls, in endless confusion of vine work.”

All photos by David W. Smith.

Fast boat to Nicaragua: Just us, the crew, and a dead man

Everything goes by boat on the Rio Frio: sheep, travelers, and (read on) a coffin; photo by David W. Smith

After we’ve waiting 3 or 4 hours at the Los Chiles muelle (dock) for the boat the Nicaragua, not one but two boats arrive: the bote publico, and the lancha from Esquina del Lago lodge. A big group from the U.S. is being shuttled from the lodge to Los Chiles after a few days of tarpon fishing on the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua, and we’re catching a ride back to the lodge.

But first, the crew helps the returning clients through Costa Rica immigration (easy as pan dulce), gets something to eat, and has a good long smoke or two.

Finally, the captain saunters back to the boat.

“Hay un problemita,” he says. There’s a little problem.

How little? I wonder.

“Hay un difunto,” he says in a low voice. “There’s a deceased person.”

So that was a coffin in the back of the pickup that puttered by while we were waiting for the rain to stop. And it seems the difunto needs to go where we’re going. In our boat.

No hay problema, I say. “El es muerto. Somos vivos.” There’s no problem. He’s dead. We’re alive.

The captain cracks a smile.

“Pero espero que no tenemos que hablar con el,” I add. I just hope we don’t have to talk to him.

“Porque es dificil converser con los difuntos,” says David. It’s not so easy to converse with the dead.

“Son muy serios,” the captain agrees. They’re so serious.

Loading a coffin onto the fast boat to Nicaragua; photo by David W. Smith

It’s not quite as funny when they start to load the coffin into the boat. It takes up a whole row—six molded plastic seats and the aisle—at the back of the long and narrow lancha.  A young man accompanies the difunto, and his face shows fresh pain.

We later learn that the dead man, the young man’s uncle, was a Nicaraguan who crossed the border to work in Costa Rica, in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui. He died of a puneleado—a knife wound—he’d suffered in a fight. The young man came down to Costa Rica to claim his uncle’s body, and to bring him home.

We start up the Rio Frio at dusk. Swallows swoop close to the water, picking off mosqitoes. A flock of parrots flies overhead. Herons and egrets stands sentinel along the river. Howler monkeys add their deep-throated call from the branches of dense trees.

Cormarants along the Rio Frio; photo by David W. Smith

David and I stand at the front of the boat, enjoying the cool wind as it dries our sweaty clothes. As we pass under a leafless tree full of black cormorants, it feels as if we’re part of a funeral procession.

The lights of San Carlos, Nicaragua, at the confluence of the Rio Frio, the Rio San Juan, and Lake Nicaragua; photo by David W. Smith

In less than an hour we see the lights of San Carlos across the water. We’ve arrived at the confluence of the Rio Frio, the Rio San Juan, and Lake Nicaragua (also known as Lake Colcibolco). The boat noses up to a rickety wooden building right on the water: immigration. We step out onto the wooden walkway and approach the lighted window.

Immigration office in San Carlos, Nicaragua

There’s no line to enter Nicaragua here, and the only other action is a policewoman, in heavy eyeliner and dangling earrings, asking the nephew of the dead man for his paperwork. No matter where you die, it seems, there’s paperwork before you can leave this world behind. We heard that most boat captains would have charged $150 to transport the body from Los Chiles to San Carlos, but since the Esquina del Lago boat was already making the trip, they charged only for gas.

As we present our passports, fill out forms in the dim light (where are my glasses?), and pay our $7 a piece entry fee, a tall pale man appears, floating over the heads of the smaller, darker Nicaraguans. It’s Phillipe Tisseaux, expat Frenchman, serial relocator (he’s lived in France, St. Martin and Costa Rica, to name a few places), and owner of the Esquina del Lago Lodge, where we’ll be based for a few days.

There’s silver stubble on his cheeks and his blue eyes are kind. “Do you understand what happened?” he says in English softened with French. He’s talking about our fellow passenger, el difunto.

Yes, yes, we assure him. We understand. People die. They need to be brought home. It was the least we could do, to share a ride with someone who needed it a lot more than we did.

Did you notice the name of the boat in the photo? The Amen.