El Castillo, Nicaragua – El Castillo is a really interesting town on the bank of the San Juan river. It is a pretty small town, but there is a fort, built to help protect the capital upriver from pirates who boat in from the ocean. The fort was successful in keeping many pirates at bay primarily due to the Raudal El Diablo rapids that slowed the pirates down enough so that the Spanish could attack with canons. The fort was eventually taken by a 22 year old British pirate – mainly thanks to the Spanish solder’s desire to get the heck out of the area – they soon discovered it had become a breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes. Later the town became an important stop on the 49ers route from the East Coast of the States to California. Many 49ers opted to travel via Nicaragua in order to bypass the arduous land route over the Rockies.

Our boat to El Castillo.
The day we arrived it started pouring – we had officially entered the rainy season. It was their first rain and ours as well. It was nice to have the rain since it had been so incredibly dry and hot the past month, but it would likely rain every day for the rest of our travels – and we weren’t really looking forward to that. We learned when we checked into our hotel that the electricity in the entire town had gone out the day before and no one knew when to expect it to come back on. We didn’t think it would really be that big of a deal, but it turned out that it was really hard to find restaurants serving food. We ate at our hotel’s overpriced restaurant for lunch and ended up having cup-o-noodles and chips for dinner. We also had to take cold showers and use our headlamps to see in our room at night. And no wifi!
The next morning the power was still out and it was looking like rain. After breakfast we hurried over to the fort so that we could visit it before the rain started. The fort was pretty cool with good views and lots of information in English and Spanish about the fort’s history. We just managed to see it all before we had to run for cover and wait out the next downpour.