Tambien mi dijo un arriero
Que no hay que llegar primero
Pero hay que saber llegar
Which translates roughly to
Also a mule-driver told me
That you don´t have to arrive first,
But you have to know how to arrive
But of course, if I´m going to talk about that trip I should start at the start not at the end -- if going down a big slow river doesn´t merit a chronological narrative, what does?
Day 1: San Carlos to Boca de Sabalos
Trip-start exhiliaration. I am floating in more ways than one as I leave the muddy beach and cruise past town in the mellow dawn. For one, it is simply great to get out of San Carlos. The glow lasts all the way down to a known holding spot called Santa Fe, where I pause to troll a few passes for tarpon. None are showing, and none are biting. After I leave Santa Fe a headwind comes up that will be my constant midday-afternoon adversary. I settle into the hammer-and-anvil feeling that you get when the current is pushing you one way and the wind another. Not that there was enough current to please me on this 32 mile day, four miles of which were spent in more bootless trolling near Boca de Sabalos. I am good and tired of paddling by then, but to not troll that same spot where I hooked up last year, a spot which has mythical status in my teensy little world -- impossible!
Day 2: Boca de Sabalos to Boca de Bartola
Two solid days of trolling at Sabalos (not counted here as travelling days) are planned into my intinerary, with the idea that I could catch a tarpon, get that out of the way, and then paddle the rest of the river in peace and euphoria. It is not to be. I do not get a single strike in 20 miles or so of trolling time. And friends, even Shadbourne Gilmore can get worn out on trolling without a little bit of reinforcement. Resultingly, I am glad to get going downriver, where I splash through the rapids at El Castillo and have a nice river shrimp lunch while watching the turists see the sights I already saw last year (I think El Castillo is pretty heavily overrated, but I am a guy whose ruins cherry was popped at 19 by Macchu Picchu). When I get bored paddling, I enjoy watching the big spaces between the afternoon thunderheads, which is like looking through an airplane window but with fresh air.
Day 3: Boca de Bartola to Boca de San Carlos
More delightfully unexpected rapids push me halfway to San Carlos, and keep me clipping along until the wind comes up. I´m told there is a hotel in this Costa Rican town, but when I check it out, I am looking at the equivalent of the worst dark, depressing, poopy-smelling fleabag room where I used to sleep in earlier days as a trekking dirtbag. No problem, I am prepared with a hammock and tarp, and I head downstream looking for two appropriate trees that are A) not completely choked with vines and jungle flora and B) decently removed from the sandbar habitats of crocodiles, which have started to appear regularly.
The only spots that satisfy the criteria are on the ranchlands of the Costa Rican side, so it is there that I stop and set up. Camping out on my own is very, very delightful after being pampered at the Hotel Sabalos and Refugio Bartola, and I love the feeling of reclining in the clear grassy riverbank with a bit of rum, and watching the full moon rise over the impenetrable wall of jungle on the Nicaraguan side of the river. The background sound of birds and monkeys is thick and riotous in the early part of the night, and then when it clears out a bit closer to midnight I hear one particularly beautiful bird call that is like a plaintive descending scale. Pretty enchanting in the moonlight, and probably the peak moment of my river trip.
Day 4: San Carlos to Sarapiqui
My next stop is also in Costa Rica, only this time it will be in the lap of luxury at Cabinas de la Trinidad. The place is run by a meticulous old Tica who must have been quite a beauty in her time. Like at Hotel Sabalos, I am the only guest (there was one other couple at Bartola) and I get royal treatment with complimentary REAL coffee for a change, instead of the instant stuff that Nicaraguans always use. Having watched spider monkeys and capuchin monkeys from the kayak as they flew around in the canopy, I finally spot my first howler monkeys here at the hotel, probably because they are habituated to humans. You hear them all the time, morning and night on the river, but they are very hard to spot. When I´m on my way out the next day, they do something that infuriates me: they climb into the branches over my launch spot and start pissing and crapping all over the area! Intentionally, I feel sure! I probably should laugh, but I know it´s going to be a long day and I´m anxious to get going. For a few monkey turds that float on the surface, big fat carp-like fish rise up and take like trout take grasshoppers. Idea: brown balsa popper, plain without feathers, the Monkey Turd.
Day 5: Sarapiqui to San Juan de Nicaragua
Like day 3, the current helps me through about ten miles of the morning, and then deserts me completely. The very last leg of the trip comes after a confluence where 80 or 90% of the river goes down the Rio Colorado into Chile, while I´m left with a very shallow, slow 10% for twenty miles. Also, the notion of the Indio-Maiz jungle reserve seems to break down here, and there are people sitting in front of their little farm shacks along the way, mutely gawking at the gringo as though he were a two-headed space alien. After years of being an outsider in Japan and elsewhere, this still annoys me. But the day has treats in store. Eventually, I begin to hear the breakers of the Caribbean coming over the freshened air, and they crescendo into a very cool moment of beaching the kayak and climbing over a sand dune to see the whooooole enchilada spread out before me. Like I told some guys, to see the wide open sea after a week on a jungle river was quite ¨emocionante.¨
San Juan de Nicaragua itself is, among dreary, filthy, impoverished sites of human habitation, truly the holiest of holies. Its location has been moved a few times, and its name changed twice already, and if it was ever worse than now, I don´t want to imagine it. The Nicaraguan socialists seem to have sensed the need for intervention, and have poured money into projects that all are brazenly announced with big placards placed in front of the sites, signs which go so far as to announce the amount of money invested: ¨Nicaragua Avanza! Proyecto para Agua Potable. Costo: $2,600,000.¨ ¨Nicaragua Avanza! Proyecto para Sitio Turistico. Costo: $190,000.¨ Yet, you notice that power is only on for three hours every day, and the piped water is so unreliable that the locals hoard it in plastic barrels, and especially that the Tourist site, a big concrete monstrosity labeled ¨Brisas del Mar Bar and Grill¨ has no bar and no food and contains only one rather addled looking fellow who spends the entire day listening to a radio held up to his ear.
You´re going to think I´m making this up, but, while my head was dancing with maxims of trade liberalism, I actually MET a group of government functionaries. Or whatever you call them. They came to town in their own private motorboat, and stood out much as gringos do -- they were well dressed, well fed, and goofy. I watched as they took a bunch of pictures on the dock, including a set shot where the subject jumped up in the air and was photographed with waving hands. Eh? I ran into them in the better of the town´s two restaurants and asked where they were from. They´re from Nicaragua! They are a group of lawyers and engineers tasked with deciding how the national funds will be spent. They are touring the area, assessing sites. As I listen, I realize that these are the very guys that make me lean toward economic liberality. I always ask, ¨who are you going to trust to make all the decisions on what to produce, and how much of it, and where investment should be concentrated -- in some bunch of humanly error-prone government goobers like the Soviet trade ministry, who fucked up not just their own massive country but much of Europe, too?¨ And here were the goobers, joking around and having a fine time in San Juan de Nicaragua. Their sense of fun was infectious and I couldn't not like them. At one point I almost got offended, thinking that the chief lawyer was mocking gringo-accented Spanish; but no, he explained, that was how the crazy Costa Ricans talk! I´m sure they had some good laughs at my expense as soon as I left. And I do hope they build the airport they were talking about, as it may be the only way I ever get back to San Juan.
At any rate, it was a trip. I´m very glad I made it. I wish I´d got a tarpon, but what the hell. I don´t wish it bad enough to spend a few more days trolling, and so I have arranged to be heading home from Ortegatown this very afternoon. I´ve barely left the hotel room, where I have feasted well on Champions League highlights and movies. I´ll get the pictures up ASAP.
Viva Nicaragua! and California. No hay que llegar primero, pero hay que saber llegar.
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