San Jose, Costa Rica
Everybody from Jersey is particuarly proud of one thing their state has produced. For most, it´s Springsteen. For me, it´s pirates. I take particular pride in the buccaneers and skallywags who once roamed the towns and trolled the waters off the coast of the Jersey shore. My childhood was filled with legends of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and their stories of plunders, shipwrecks and buried treasure. As a teenager, I identified with the ¨sticking it to the Man¨ philosophy of privateers, those pirates hired by European powers to plunder the goods of other European powers. For a time I claimed I was a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake, one of the greatest pirates of his day. Although my maternal side does indeed bear the name Drake, I convienently let myself forget that this is only because my Grandpa Vitie found his Lithuanian last name, Kakausus, too much of an earfull for immigration officers.
Still I am entranced by the daring-dos of pirates past, but I prefer my piracy romanticized to the extreme. I excuse the literal rapes, pillages, murders, robberies and place more of a flowery drape over the whole enterprise. Caricatures like Johnny Depp´s Jack Sparrow and Captain Hook are right up my alley. During my time as a program director at a summer camp, I indoctrinated my love of piracy unto unsuspecting young minds on several occasions. Here I am celebrating such a victory:
Arrrr matey!
A pirate special event at camp
So it was with due enthusiasim that I took to the lengthy and gorey history of pirates in Nicaragua. Almost everywhere we travelled over the past 6 weeks in Nicaragua has been chock full of buccaneer lore. I could design an entire tour of Nicaragua soley based on pirate history (I´m sure such a thing already exisits). Below you will find an artfully rendered map tracing our journey through Nicaragua. You will note that many of the places we visited will be on this ¨Pirate Tour¨.
Pirate Tour of Nicaragua
Granada: Not only a beautiful colonial town but also the crown jewel of piratanical marauding. Due to its strategic positioning between the shores of Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean, anyone who was anyone sacked Granada in the 17th century. Although it is one of the oldest cities in Central America, many of its buildings do not show their age since the city was constantly being pillaged and burned during the 1600´s. William Walker, a particuarly douchey American filabuster/pirate, declared himself president after taking control of the city (after promsing to deliver it back to Nicaraguans from the Europeans). When the anti-imperialist Nicaraguans drove him away, he burned the city to the ground. He tried the same trick in Honduras, where they promptly executed him.
Ometepe Islands: It is said that pirates would hide on the islands by day and canoe towards Granada by night, silently paddling closer to another pillage of the city.
Bluefields: W&W Readers already know that Bluefields is a good place to get swindled, but it was an especially important pirate hub for its namesake, Dutch pirate Abraham Blauvelt. It was also an important base for ever-famous pirate Henry Morgan. Before he was reincarnated into the booze of choice for Girls Gone Wild producers, Captain Morgan ruled the seas from Jamacia all the way down the Caribean coast.
Corn Islands: Also a base of operations for Captain Morgan and others. Location ideal for burying treasure, marooning treasonous crew members and parrot incarceration.
Rio San Juan: As you can see from the map, the Rio San Juan runs from the southern end of Lake Nicaragua and empties into the Atlantic Ocean. For centuries it was hoped that the Rio San Juan would provide the ever-sought-after link from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans. For pirates, it meant easy access from the ocean to Granada. That is, if rowing up-stream in canoes, fighting off caimans and fresh water bull sharks, contracting malaria and battling the Spainards is easy.
Our last week in Nicaragua brought us to two towns on the Rio San Juan, San Carlos and El Castillo. They provided the neccessary measure of physical remoteness, local charm and scenic beauty to conclude our adventure in Nicaragua.
Sunset in San Carlos
We felt honored to stay in El Castillo, a small town on the Rio San Juan only accessible by boat. A three-hour boat ride brought us upon this humble hamlet, a jumble of wooden shacks on stilts dwarfed by a crumbling Spanish fortress on the top of a small hill. It was at this fortress that the Spanish fought off pirates attempting to navigate up the tricky rapids in an otherwise calm river.
El Castillo, from the Spanish Fort
Now, thanks to a generous UNESCO grant, the ruins of the Fort have been restored and a museum errected to commemorate both the pirates and the Spainards who fought them. Tom enjoyed endless (and I mean endless) entertainment imagining the poor pirates, the poor wooden-legged, parrot-laden souls struggling to paddle upstream while the Spainish bombarded them with cannons and blazing arrows.
Spanish anti-pirate fort
When we weren´t taking in the pirate history, we stuffed ourselves with gigantic river shrimp, walked the meandering, car-less streets, and lounged at our river-side hotel. A highlight of our trip was taking a night tour in a motorized dugout canoe. We paroled the waters under the cover of darkness using a spotlight to look for the glowing red eyes of caiman, a small cousin of the alligator. We saw roosting birds, a Jesus Christ lizard and several caiman ranging from 3 to 8 feet in length.
Wooden houses along the river
More cowboy than pirate: an El Castillo local
Yesterday, after a long day of travel (2 two-hour boat rides, 7 hour bus ride), we are back in San Jose. Adios Nicaragua, Hola rafting the Pacuare River tomorrow!
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