El Castillo

Trip Start Feb 23, 2008
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Trip End Aug 23, 2008


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Where I stayed
Hostel Aurela
(El Castillo hotels)

Flag of Nicaragua  ,
Wednesday, June 11, 2008

After a restless nights sleep, we arrived in San Carlos, a dirty frontier town on the southeastern shore of Lago de Nicaragua. From here we took a small boat down the rio San Juan , which runs all the way to the Caribbean Sea. About a third of the way down is the small town of El Castillo, named after the fortress built by the Spanish in 1675 at a strategic bend in the river to try and halt the passage of English, French and other pirates heading to Granada. Things seem to be taking an economic downturn in El Castillo, of the half dozen or so restaurants we passed in trying to find a place to sleep only 1 was opened for business.  We acquied a room at Hostel Aurela for $3 a night and headed up to the fortress. The fortress was one of those places that really annoy me. Nicaraguians pay about $0.60 to get in but as a tourist we had to pay $2 or more than three times as much. If this was to occur in England there would be outrage. I certainly wasnt going to pay the extra $1 for taking my camera in. The fort did have a good museum with an excellent history of the area, unfortunately in spanish El Castillo
El Castillo
 . But from what i could understand it talked about the characters from the area including a young Horatio Nelson, the daughter of the spanish commander who mamaged to hold off the English, Captain Morgan (a notorious pirate) and a lot about the proposed canal thru nicaragua that would have been easier to build than the panama canal and reduce the time from New York to San Francisco by about 800 kilometre. Apparantly even now there is talk about this canal which would cost about  25 times the annual budget of nicaragua.
After sitting and watching the trafic on the river in the midday sun we headed to the river for a spot of fishing. I had bought a line in Belize and it didnt take long for Daniel to acquire one. We were told the river were full of fish and had seen large fish jumping out of the water in the middle of the river. The bait of choice we were told was banana. Sitting in the afternoon sun, fishing cant be beaten. Despite numerous bites we, well Daniel only managed to catch 1 fish which we gave to some locals who were going to make a soup out of it.
We went out to dinner in the only place that was open and had a good cheap meal. I thought that this was probably be the last cheap meal we would be having as tommorrow we were heading for Costa Rica and the one thing people said about Costa Rica was that it was expensive.
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