saying goodbye to Nicaragua

After the Papaturro I travelled along a different river, this time the four-hour boat trip along the Rio San Juan, to El Castillo.  This village, of 1,500 people, lies beside a set of rapids, at the foot of the 17th century castle that gives the place its name.

The town was home to a great Nicaraguan heroine, the 19-year-old Rafaela Herrera who inspired the defenders to victory against a British raiding party after her father, the commander, died.  They could not defy the British for ever, however, and in 1780 another British party, this time led by a 22-year-old Horatio Nelson, captured the fortress.  Most of the conquerors died of dysentery over the next few months, finally abandoning the fortress in 1781.

I spent a couple of hours around the castle as the museum is excellent and there were a few nice birds hanging out in a big fruiting tree.  Then after a long lazy lunch in a restaurant beside the river I took the boat back to San Carlos.

In the evening I went to the little lakeside park to check my emails - the Sandinista government having made it a legal requirement that every town provide free wifi in its main square or park.  There were people around with cameras, and I soon discovered that the president - Comandante Daniel himself - had been expected for the formal opening of a nearby bridge, but that all such events had been cancelled earlier that day as it was felt to be bad form to be celebrating something while a dozen miners were trapped in a mine in the north of the country.  I was very sad to have missed him.  I gave money to the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign in the early 1980s, to support the Sandinistas, and to see one of their main men in person (at that time a leader of the revolutionaries and now president) would have been very nice.

But I went back to my little hostel - $4 for a comfortable little wooden room of my own (with shared, but very clean, toilets and showers) - for my last night in Nicaragua.  The country said goodbye to me in its own style, with a small earthquake (four point something) at 4:30 in the morning...

The nest day I took another boat, to the border crossing into Costa Rica, and then a couple of buses to San Jose where I stopped for the night.  I just had enough time to visit the gold museum the next morning, which I must say was very good, with typical gold objects from pre-Colombian times but also with extensive information, mostly in English.

Then I took the bus back to Panama City.  I'd chosen to take the midday bus and arrive at 4 in the morning (rather than the midnight one) because I was keen to see the scenery of Costa Rica, but I was distracted by the conversation of the man sitting next to me.  He had fought in Nicaragua with the contras, part of an elite unit whose task was to kill Eden Pastora and Daniel Ortega.  Clearly they'd had no success with Comandante Daniel!  I was keen to get information from him about the grenade attack on Eden Pastora, as I don't think it was ever officially confirmed that the US (the contras) were behind it, but he wouldn't talk - claimed that his years there had been stressful and he'd needed psychiatric treatment afterwards for PTSD, so I couldn't push him as much as I'd have liked to.  He wasn't overly impressed to find out I had donated to the Sandinistas but we certainly had an interesting conversation and the journey back home passed very quickly.