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Up the jungle with a Sandinista
By Joe | October 19, 2006
Published in The Guardian, Oct, 2006
“You can swim here if you like,” said Yaró flopping into the waist-high water and hauling our boat onto a sandbank. From deep within my memory, bells were ringing about tiny jungle parasites that find no greater pleasure than swimming straight up your plumbing and co-habiting your vital organs. Plus, there was of course the crocodile infestation and the world’s only freshwater sharks that lurked never far away.
“No thanks, I’ll just watch.” Besides, it was raining. A lot. But then this was the rainy season in Nicaragua.
The suggested bathing area was the Rio Bartola, a vegetation-packed jungle canal snaking into dark grottoes, one of 25 feeder tributaries to Central Americas second longest river, the Rio San Juan. Once destined to be the inter-oceanic canal until Panama stole the honours at the last minute, this marine highway curves along the Costa Rica border for 180 kilometres through dense gallery forest before spilling into the Caribbean Sea. Mark Twain called it “an earthly paradise” during his journey from San Francisco to New York though obviously he chose to ignore the less welcoming inhabitants of this nirvana.
Paradise was far from my mind the day before when I banged down in a single-prop plane onto the loosely termed ‘airfield’ of San Carlos. Sure there was air, and yes there was a thin field, but any relation to an airport ended there. A waiting car bounced me to a ramshackle town dodging potholes deep enough to qualify as underground parking. Here, 6,000 people lived on the edge of the jungle and the edge of purgatory. With roads of mud, eye-squinting interiors and street corner stares that linger just that little bit too long, San Carlos was like most frontier towns - spectacularly ugly, verging on the anarchic and best left as soon as is conveniently possible.
Yaró Choiseul-Praslin had arranged just that for me. Stepping from the shadows of his upstairs office, he extended a hand. “Hola. Shall we go?” It was the only thing I wanted to hear right now. Yaró looked like a pony-tailed Howard Keel who had hit hard times. Greasy grey hair and mud-stained clothes belied his relative affluence.
On the way to his mooring I found out he was the owner of Sabalos Lodge, my riverside accommodation within the Los Guatuzos Wildlife Refuge for the next few nights. He also revealed that he exported reptiles and amphibians to clients in Bedfordshire. “I don’t export much now,” he explained, “there aren’t so many left.” I assumed he meant animals, not recipients in Bedfordshire.
Before the panga, our 20ft motorised canoe, hit full throttle and drowned all conversation Yaró told me that he had been put in control of the agricultural reforms along the Rio San Juan during the revolution of the 80’s. It was my first encounter with a Sandinista and in spite of friends’ warnings back in Manchester I happily remained unbothered by murder, kidnap or robbery. “The Sandinistas are just another democratic political party,” said Yaró. “They have their bad apples like everyone else but I think there’s enough support for them to possibly win the elections next year.”
Win or lose, an unstoppable tourism revolution has already begun in Nicaragua. Up until five years ago European visitors were as rare as several of the 600 species of birds living here. Now nature lovers, bird-watchers and eco-tourists are starting to discover the raw attraction of Central America’s heart and lungs. In just a few square kilometres of the pristine Indio-Maiz Bio Reserve there are more species of birds, trees and insects than in the whole of Europe. Rustic lodges, research stations and local guides are popping up along the riverbanks, catering for the rising demand in jungle adventures but without the excessive hand-holding of more mainstream rainforest destinations like Costa Rica.
In fact, even beyond tree-tourism the figures have been steadily climbing in Nicaragua as its guerrilla identity disappears into the mists of time. The country has been at peace for over 16 years now and has the lowest crime rate in the whole of Central America.
With visitors up by over 25 per cent compared to last year things are looking up for the supposed bad boy of the Americas although the statistics show the UK market is slow to catch on, representing just 1 per cent of last year’s adventure-seekers.
Albeit small, British interest in this country is not a new phenomenon. Infamous buccaneer Henry Morgan used the Rio San Juan to make off with more than half a million pounds looted from Nicaragua’s second city, Granada. Sir Francis Drake also plundered the region’s riches and in 1779 Horatio Nelson was part of a British force sailing inland from the Caribbean in order to take control of Lake Nicaragua and thus ‘divide the Spanish empire in half’. El Castillo is a moss-upholstered fortress I visited standing guard above a set of rapids. This is where Nelson had surrendered after his forces found that jungle living wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Of the 600 or so British troops who took part in the incursion, all but eight were finished off by malaria, dysentery and a host of other tropical afflictions.
Even nowadays though, in light of any alternative national identity, it is still the imagery of bloody revolution and political instability that fuels the intrigue of similar Indiana Jones wannabees like myself. Coupled with that, I had also hooked into the tourism industry’s favourite pastime, guess ‘the next …’. Many fingers are now pointing towards Nicaragua as the next Costa Rica. This startling juxtaposition added to my curiosity. One country is famed for its ecological richness and peace-loving population; the other wears only the badge of war-mongering revolutionaries. So where were the parallels? Well, Nicaragua shares the same rich palette of green adventure-land, golden beaches and cobalt blue lakes as Costa Rica but without the crowds and at a much lower price – for now.
Within minutes of us disturbing the quiet sheen of the Rio San Juan the verdant appeal was all too plain to see. A barrage of foliage lined both sides of the river. Giant palm fronds elbowed space amidst curtains of vines whilst giant cedars stretched for a gasp of clear sky. Two slender white herons protested skywards at our noisy intrusion to their fishing and a trio of black vultures circled slowly above the canopy like aerial undertakers.
After an hour, just past the midpoint of our boat journey, Yaró signalled to a couple of young boys passing in the opposite direction. Both boats headed for the bank stirring a cloud of mosquitoes as the bows met amidst ten-foot reeds. The smaller of the boys lifted the lid on a large metal box weighting the middle of their canoe to reveal a healthy catch of guapote still pouting for air amidst cubes of ice. Yaró bought a dozen of the largest for the equivalent of 25 pence each. “Tonight’s dinner,” he smiled.
Later that evening, with the sound of oscillating crickets and the chirpy banter of frogs as my companions I dined on the fresh rainbow bass in the open-sided eating area of Sabalos Lodge. Palm leaves reached in, rustling against the wooden walls like a pet clawing for food.
Along a wooden walkway three young Spaniards were chatting noisily in the ‘reception’ area, a cluster of hammocks and fishing tackle strung above a shelf of decaying books on expiring species. Afterwards, I shared a bottle of Flor de Caña, the local rum, with Yaró’s only other guests - a mother and daughter from Switzerland and a lone birdwatcher from Louisiana. They had also heard on the grapevine about the adventure potential of this new destination. Yesterday they had met on the slow ‘public’ panga from San Carlos, eventually reaching the isolated lodge in twice the time it had taken Yaró and I.
At 9pm the generator was turned off plunging us all into undiluted blackness. Using torches we scythed haphazard paths back to our scattered cabins, beams flailing wildly like light sabres as faces touched newly strung spider’s webs stretched between the trees. Having thankfully retained just enough sobriety to sleep under the mosquito net, I closed my eyes listening to a light opera of insect song. Only the baritone grunt of a howler monkey heckling from somewhere deep within the forest interrupted the performance before I fell soundly asleep.
I awoke to torrential rain machine-gunning onto broad banana leaves and ricocheting into the thatchwork canopy of my accommodation, one of seven similar cabins at the lodge. Ten feet away from my hammock the rich coffee waters of the now-swollen Rio San Juan rushed clumps of fallen vegetation downstream.
In the new Nicaragua, perhaps for the first time in its recent history, Mother Nature is the only ruling force that can now interrupt the advance of a new army of tourists discovering this mini-Amazon.
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