San Carlos, Nicaragua

Can´t help but laugh when you see something like that on the inside of your hotel room door...thankfully, we were spared ¨la plaga de chayules¨.

Took a longboat up the Rio Frio to San Carlos, Nicaragua. The boat is pretty much the only way to cross the border into Nicaragua from Costa Rica except via plane, or the PanAmerican Highway further west. Ride actually cost about $10, which for an hour long ride is pretty steep around these parts. That driver has a good business going, crowding 50 or 60 people into a longboat and scooting down the river a ways. Learned that local monkeys swim the 30 meters across the river when they need to, although didn't see this.

As for San Carlos...well, nothing really there, but I wanted to take the ferry across Lake Nicaragua to Isla Ometepe so kind of had to transit through the place. They have an old fort (re)built in the 1700´s that was apparently used as recently as the last century to fight against invading US Marines...amazing how many times there have been American troops on the ground in Central America. At any rate, I didn´t go see the fort. My tourbook advised me if I needed to spend the night in San Carlos I should probably start drinking as soon as possible, advice that I took to heart with a nice couple from Barcelona. They made me feel better by mentioning that they don´t really understand the local Spanish very well either.