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.

Tarpon fishing and caiman wrangling at Esquina del Lago

Hanging out at Esquina del Lago lodge on the Rio San Juan

During our week or so in Nicaragua we were based at Esquina del Lago, a river lodge with no hot water but plenty of rickety charm. Lodge owner Phillipe Tisseaux met us at immigration in San Carlos, then whisked us across the water. It was dark when we arrived at the lodge, and the life-sized crocodile on his dock was lifelike enough to make us back away.

After we settled into our modest room, we were fed a delicious meal of river shrimp (as big as crawfish) in a cream sauce that owed not a little to Tisseaux’s origin.

Born in France in 1949 and now a Nicaraguan resident, Tisseaux bought this spit of land at the corner of the Rio San Juan, the Rio Frio, and Lake Nicaragua in 2002 and opened the lodge in 2006.

Caimans on our very first night

After a dinner straight from the river one of Tisseaux’s workers, Minor, a young man of few words, said, “Come. The caiman.”

I thought he meant that there might be one on the wooden walkways jutting out over the water, a companion to the fake croc that had scared us when we arrived.

But he motioned us into a boat (you have to go everywhere by boat; there are no roads and not many paths during the wet season). We puttered out over the dark water to a swampy area a little ways upstream. To our dismay the young man went over the side of the boat and was thigh-deep in water before we knew what was happening. He went thrashing through the swamp, then came back with something in his hands. It was a small caiman, and he showed us how to hold it. It felt so alive in my hands. I wanted to get it back into the water, where it belonged.

Later Tisseaux would tell me “Minor’s crazy. He gets the babies, and how do you think the mamas feel about that?”

But Minor wasn’t satisfied with just showing us a little caiman. We motored over to another swampy area, where he swept a flashlight across the water, soon finding the glow of eyes that he was looking for.

“Es grande,” he said. “Voy por el.” He’s a big one. I’m going after him.

And over the side of the boat he went.

I was relieved when he came back empty-handed.

Tarpon fishing and the Esquina del Lago

Philippe Tisseaux at Esquina del Lago lodge on the Rio San Juan

Tisseaux, who has lived everywhere from Florida to St. Martin to Costa Rica, says he’s been ‘retired’ since 1989, but he never seems to not be working. His lodge has 6 rooms and he is building 4 more, he was on his way to a community meeting in San Carlos when we first arrived, and he seems to know everyone within a 100-mile radius and is well-informed about what’s going on in his adopted country.

He also arranges kayaking trips (or you can use his for free to do short paddles on the river or lake), and he can arrange trips to the Solentiname Islands, to local reserves, or downriver to El Castillo, the old Spanish fort built in 1675 to guard against pirates coming up the Rio San Juan from the Caribbean, into Lake Nicaragua, and on to the wealthy colonial city of Granada, which was sacked and pillaged innumerable times during the colonial era.

But his main business is taking people tarpon fishing in the Rio San Juan. He wants to protect that fishery and is adamant that the tarpon his clients catch be released unharmed. Others who fish tarpon in the area are more likely to sell it for less than a dollar a pound. Tisseaux is trying to convince the fishermen in the area that all the magnificent tarpon in the river are worth more to them dead that alive, since sportfisherman can catch the same fish again and again.

Esquina del Lago lodge has been featured in Field & Stream magazine, and CNN came recently to film a fishing show featuring the mythic and prehistoric-looking tarpon, called sabalo in Spanish.

We made friends with the fake croc after we showed him who was boss.