San Juan Trippin

Back in my homebound days as a disaffected teenager I was accustomed to do a certain amount of travelling without ever leaving Bar Harbor. At 19 I went to Peru for the first time (of three trips) and began a lasting trend of tripping in the more conventional versions of space and time. And let me tell you that going down the San Juan in a foldable kayak is, in a word, a trip. With the tarpon rolling all around, and a four-foot gar on the line, and a crocodile sunning on the shore where you´d like to land to try and unhook the gar, you really get taken back to a time not just premodern or precolonial but prehistoric. It is wierd and exhilirating.

I wrote that fishing is a positive mode of freedom, and that it has been. However, just lately it has not been a particularly great mode of other things such as, for instance, catching fish. My whole tally on the San Juan includes two gar, one snapped off on branches (the four footer) and another ugly ass one that I got on film. No bite on the tarpon. And believe me I tried: eight hours trolling near Boca Sabalos, five hours trolling from a motorboat near Castillo, and then eight more kayak hours on a great looking run further down. Other guys were out at Castillo and Sabalos, and no one hooked up. In fact, the overpriced guide whose website I raided for information (http://www.nicaraguafishing.com/) brought down ten sports on the hotel at Sabalos, allowing me to escape just in time. Word is that they haven´t caught a damn thing either. There have been rains; the river is colored and full of floating hyacinths; but those are all excuses. I got skunked. I am mas salado que un cuajo.

With hopes of change in the wind! I met a couple of cool gringo expats who are living on San Fernando in the Solentiname archipelago (my next stop) and they not only informed me of spots and techniques, but will actually take me out in a boat with the locals. By now I am far from too proud to accept a little help and company. Though I defintely still hope to hunt and land a few from my sweet kayak, which has survived barbed wire on the dock post of Sabalos, the rapids at Castillo, and severe slashing from the teeth and treble hooks associated with 50 pounds of angry gar.


Harrassing a small crocodile on the Rio Bartola.