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| Essay Archive | October 26, 2003 |
A LAKE CROSSING
Navigating the Fury of Nicaragua's Inland Sea
The wind was ripping, thrashing the surface of the lake before rushing over the brown sand beach where we stood. The sky over Lake Nicaragua was clear, but screaming with a pressurized air that pushed endless lines of white caps onto the shore.
An old Nicaraguan cowboy was laughing into the wind. With his black felt Stetson hat pressed down around his ears, the old cowboy cupped his calloused hands around his mouth, miming a man vomiting into a bag. "You'll need to bring a bag with you if you plan on going out on that lake today". The howl of the wind was almost enough to drown out his laughter; it was a taunting laugh, though tinged with elements of pity and admiration. I smiled at the old cowboy, grinding my teeth. The truth hurt. Often Lake Nicaragua looked more like the sea than a body of fresh water and today it looked more like a sea in an unpardonable rage. The swells continued pouring onto the beach. Beyond the froth rose the two mighty mountain peaks of the Island of Ometepe 15 km off-shore. The wind funneled between the two volcanic cones and whipped around their outer slopes, beating the lake into a fury.
No matter. We had committed to cross the lake at its most violent, utterly dangerous point and it just happened to be one of the windiest days of the year. The old cowboy shook his head slowly. He looked at our little fiberglass boat with a 75-hp Yamaha hanging off its stern and his great laugh returned, while he lost his imaginary lunch into his imaginary bag once again. Nicaraguan men are macho to the extreme, yet for fleeting moments even the bravest have the capacity to appreciate good sense more than bravado, the old cowboy was having one of those rare moments. He shook our hands and disappeared along the wave swept beach, his laughter escaping inland, along the wind.
I was not being macho. I was working. I had not planned this journey for fun, though I may have been guilty for its concept. My role was as the trip guide and photographer for Bill Allen; a brave, good humored environmental journalist and author of books on neo-tropical ecology, who at the time wrote for the US daily San Louis Post-Dispatch. Mr. Allen had grown dangerously fond of the idea to retrace the footsteps of Mark Twain's 1866 coast to coast passage through Nicaragua. There was no turning back.
 Mark Twain's 1866 route across Nicaragua |
Twain passed through Nicaragua in transit from San Francisco to New York, taking advantage of the Cornelius Vanderbilt mid-1800's transoceanic steamship line that carried hundreds of thousands of passengers between New York and the California via Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. When Bill Allen decided to follow Mark Twain's 1866 path across Nicaragua he hired me to guide and photograph the journey from San Juan del Sur on the Pacific Coast to San Juan del Norte on the Caribbean Sea. We had arrived that morning to the La Virgen from San Juan del Sur in a horse-carriage, just as Mark Twain did in 1866. Next up on the Twain itinerary was a lake crossing where boat traffic had stopped more than 100 years prior. The 19th century steamships docked at La Virgen on the lake's western shore, loaded passengers arriving overland from San Juan del Sur, before sailing to San Carlos via the churning, rock-filled channel that skirts the southern shores of the Island of Ometepe and the bottom of Lake Nicaragua. Bill and I had planned to cross the lake this day as far as the Solentiname Archipelago and then continue to San Carlos and the length of the San Juan River to San Juan del Norte in the coming week.
When Mark Twain wrote of his trip across Lake Nicaragua he demonstrated no concern for the crossing, remembering before the steamship left dock at La Virgen that he "…relapsed into pensive and placid gazing out upon the rippling waters of Lake Nicaragua and the two majestic mountains (the volcanoes of Ometepe Island) that tower up out of its blue depths and wrap their green summits in fleecy clouds." Twain also made short mention of the section of the journey that would soon grab our unwavering attention, recalling dryly that "Our boat started across the lake at 2:00 p.m. and at 4:00 a.m. the following morning we reached Fort San Carlos, where the San Juan River flows out - a hundred miles in twelve hours - not particularly speedy, but very comfortable."
Aside from apparently kind weather, Mark Twain had the advantage of a significantly bigger boat. Although he does not name the steamship he boarded, it most likely was very similar to steamers described by previous travelers who crossed Lake Nicaragua in the 1850's, like the Steamship "Director", which was 80 feet long and 20 wide, 4½ feet deep and pushed 130,000 pounds. A notable contrast from our rig, "La Pita", a fiberglass 19-foot long skiff (panga), no more than 5 feet wide, sporting 9 inches of draft and fully rigged weighing in at less than 600 pounds.
Boat owner Ricardo Henríquez looked worried. I had worked with Ricardo for more than four years and his expression that morning captured my attention. We had navigated his panga, albeit in less dangerous parts of the lake, on many a rough day and journeyed several times the length of the San Juan River, from the great Lake Nicaragua to the Caribbean Sea. This journey was different. La Pita, Ricardo's trusty panga, sat beached and wet, the wind coating its red and blue paint in whitecap mist. He glanced at his wet boat and then looked at me seriously, something rare for Ricardo who would laugh off open-heart surgery two years later and pull through just fine. I was standing next to the utterly unconcerned journalist Bill Allen, who was relaxed, even happy, standing on the beach and smiling at the lake, ready for an amusing day of wave jumping in the tropics. Ricardo led me away gently from Bill Allen with a pat on the shoulder and a subtle push. "Bloody beautiful idea" Ricardo grunted to me in Spanish, talking downwind from Bill Allen. I shrugged, smiling helplessly, after all, since he was crazy enough to put his boat here, how could he label me insane?
Aware of the typically difficult nature of this part of Lake Nicaragua, Ricardo had brought along his crack open-water navigator, Armando Ortiz, a 56 year-old man from the Island of Ometepe. I shook Armando's hand and he looked at me dully, unexpressive. That is his way. A raised eyebrow from Armando is like an arm waving scream from another man. There is no wasted movement. He simply does not get excited. After all, he started sailing the often radical swells of Lago de Nicaragua when he was only 11 years old, crossing from Ometepe Island to San Carlos as a crew member on crude, island built sail boats in the late 1950's. At the ripe age of 15 he was given the helm and has been navigating the great lake's waters for 40 years since. Armando knew why no one navigated this part of the lake. Wide open waters with sharp backed wind swells were bad enough, but the shape of the lake floor south of Ometepe and the invisible volcanic rock reefs hiding along the lake's southern shore with the mainland mean that lake currents even on a relatively calm day can be dangerous here.
Armando and Ricardo launched the boat into the lake. Then Bill Allen and I waded out in the muddy knee-deep water and clambered inside. It was there my blood grew cold. I saw Armando wearing a life jacket. It was the first time in my life I had seen a Nicaraguan boatman wearing a life vest. The vision of Armando in a life jacket may have been the scariest part of the entire journey. I knew too well that macho Nicaraguan boating etiquette meant that navigating in a life vest was behavior marginally less manly than a soldier dancing around the army barracks in a pink dress. I pointed this out this sublime detail to Bill and he laughed, though he failed to grasp the true end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it magnitude of the gesture. For me it was horrifying, akin to seeing a bird wearing a parachute.
Armando fired up the 75-hp motor while Ricardo put on a life vest. Bill and I followed suit. I had my camera gear behind me, stored in a watertight pelican case and images of it gliding gently to the bottom of the lake were running through my mind. I thought to fit the case with a life jacket, but there were no extras. Bill and I sat in the middle of the boat with a spare 25-hp Yamaha at our feet and Ricardo stood behind us gripping the wooden backrest of our bench. I crossed myself, which set Bill and Ricardo laughing while Armando motored out onto the howling beast.
Still in semi-protected waters, our trusty little panga La Pita began to buck, as we set course east, jumping 3-foot waves. The island of Ometepe towered in the horizon to our left and the southern mainland shore beamed a green line of forest on our right. The wind was relentless, yet our journalist Bill Allen had a satisfied grin on his face, like a fearless gentleman in a shooting dual, taking his ten paces smiling calmly, before turning to face destiny like an old friend. Armando was also calm, ignoring the swells we were galloping over, his vision set off far in the distance, squinting towards the lake channel between the island and the shore. The wind was squealing across the panga full of water washed off the lake's white caps. We were already soaked to the bone. After a half-hour Armando was starting to pay closer attention to the waves at hand.
Gentle on the throttle, then forceful, Armando massaged the little boat over the lake swells, choosing our speed and angle like a surgeon. He was standing now and totally focused. The waves had grown to six feet. Long term visibility was now limited to when we were climbing the swells. In the troughs we could only see the next wall of water and the cruel sky. The sets of bigger swells were also closing in interval. The occasional smaller sets had disappeared in the howl of the wind and spray. We were entering the channel.
Through the interminable spray beating our faces I could make out the outline of the south slope of the Maderas Volcano, the southern cone of the dual-volcano Isla de Ometepe. I had never seen this side of the mountain from the lake before. I have always been able to block out my surroundings and all unwanted sensory information, if only for fleeting moments, to allow myself to examine things in depth, clearly. The view of the island that morning through the screaming wind and constant assault of water was magnificent. Maderas was a glorious deep blue-green, with the morning sun warming its peaceful, mist-draped forests. The vision was short-lived, as the lake threw several cubic meters of water onto our heads with every wave, breathing required concentration. Behind us Ricardo was bailing water out of La Pita like crazy.
The six foot waves were behind us and the lake began to throw at one-story buildings of dense green water at our little boat. La Pita was climbing and climbing, with its nose pointed up at the sky, until it reached the summit of each wave, enjoying a terrific split second view of the great Lake Nicaragua, in all its aggression and fury, and then paid the price that wind swells of that magnitude charge, with their mercilessly vertical backs that leave little boats only one option, a violent crash landing.
Few are aware of how special Lago de Nicaragua is. Most of the world's great lakes were formed by receding glaciers, which left giant bodies of melted ice and snow. However, amongst the world's rain-formed lakes, only Lake Victoria in Africa is grander than Lake Nicaragua. Lago de Nicaragua's warm, clean waters (average temp. 29ºC or 85ºF) are teeming with more than 46 species of fish, including the largest of the cichlid family, the delicious guapote (Parachromis dovii). The guapote, normally at the top of the food chain, shares the lake with even bigger predators, like giant tarpon and two species of resident "lake sharks", the Caribbean bull shark (Carcharinus leucas) and the largetooth sawfish (Pristis perotteti). Lake Nicaragua's massive body is punctuated by more than 450 islands and four distinct archipelagos, including Isla de Ometepe, the grandest volcanic lake island on the planet. The lake's more than 8,200 square kilometer surface area is padded by an average depth of only 20 meters. It was born to make wind swells. When furious, Lago de Nicaragua throws a nasty combination of nearly backless waves, dangerously pointy in shape, that feature a ridiculously short wave interval. It is enough to leave one with maritime experience nostalgic for a rough ocean, where at least the waves have some spacing and a back to ride down. Navigating this day on the great lake felt like throwing the panga off of a nine foot high wall, only the next nine foot wall of water was attacking at only half a boat length away.
La Pita was getting slammed hard. I looked back at Ricardo, whose complexion is normally the color of chocolate, and he was pure white. Though he still managed a grin; at this point all he could do was bail water. Behind him Armando stood with shoulders square to the stern, steering the motor instinctively, modulating its throttle; somehow managing to navigate through the violent surf, wind and spray. He was still doing his best to play with the marginal, inconsistent rhythm of the waves, attempting to ride at least a little diagonally up their face and ease the boat off the wave summits, but the wind was dead on, and due to the channel we had no choice but to tack straight into it.
For more than a half-hour I could not see a damn thing in front of us, with so much water being thrown into my face and the ever merciless wind blasting the air. I don't have any idea how Armando could see anything either, yet alone continue to steer the boat. I had been looking back at him at regular intervals and his facial expression had been totally frozen for the last hour, lost in a perpetual silent scream. I will never forget that face. Armando must be ethnically close to 100% native Nicaragua, his features classic Mesoamerican, with a strong broad nose, high cheekbones, Asiatic eyes and very wide, expressive mouth. Armando's frozen, silent scream may have just been a product of the conditions, but it sent chills down my spine. His eyes were nearly invisible, squinting through endless assault of water pelting his face and his mouth was locked open in a perfectly rectangular grimace. He no longer saw Bill, Ricardo or I. It was Armando vs. the lake, his silent scream a direct challenge to its fury.
I was hanging on for dear life and the little 25-hp spare Yamaha stashed at our feet was being tossed around the bow, testing the fiberglass floor of the skiff every time we crashed into the narrow troughs between the waves. Journalist Bill Allen was having a blast, Jesus, I would have liked to see some fear in his eyes, but he actually seemed to be enjoying himself and was letting out an enthusiastic hoot every now and then when we smashed the boat into the lake. The waves had me holding my breath as we climbed them, rising up through brutal wind and unforgiving spray, and then exhaling during the free fall just before the huge bath that followed when we rammed the next wave while bottoming out. The noise from the wind, its incessant howl had made us almost deaf. I could not hear the motor at all, just the wind mixed with water. Cutting through the howl, I heard Armando screaming into the wind with all his might, he was chanting "¡No aguanta! ¡No aguanta! ¡Nooo aguaaaanta!" Armando was yelling that the little boat would not take anymore abuse, we were about to snap the panga into pieces.
Personally I had not considered this possibility. Mentally I was completely prepared to avoid hitting my head on the skiff as it flipped over and sank, and then try to ride out the waves to land on the jungle shore, minus all my camera gear, but ideally, alive. Yet breaking the damn thing in two was a new concept. The emotive scream from Armando, backed by 40 years of lake experience and doubly dramatic considering his quiet, reserved demeanor, dictated that we immediately consider an alternative navigational plan. Ricardo was screaming back to him, something about finding shelter along the southern shore. Armando appeared to agree, nodding silently, his face caught between his personality and the emotion of the moment. For once, Bill Allen looked at least a little concerned; wouldn't it be a bit of a challenge to crank a U-turn in the midst of these endless rows of tightly stacked nine-foot swells? There was no choice. Armando was not prone to exaggerate and if he said the boat could no longer take the abuse we had better look for shelter.
If one of these monster waves would catch us mid-turn we were toast, that was obvious. Armando would have to spin the panga around in one fluid motion, using only one wave. Armando's scream was silent again, his mouth frozen open, eyes squinting at the playing field before him. He was searching for the correct mountain of water, one with a forgiving profile, one that he would guess to have at least a bit of meat on its backside. I crossed myself again. This time no one laughed.
Armando chose the last swell of a truly giant set. We approached straight on, but Armando cranked the panga hard left at the instant we entered the wave, and we climbed its dark green face in a lazy counterclockwise spin. When we reached the furiously white-capped summit of the swell La Pita's bow was pointed straight towards the Island of Ometepe, a deep trough falling off to the right side of our little skiff. Call it luck or experience, or both, but there was magic in that turn. Falling off the backside of the wave Armando snapped the boat around the final 90º and pointing west we rode up the face of the next swell backwards. Now downwind, I could hear Armando massaging the motor and he let the wave pass harmlessly underneath us, as we flattened out its crest, creeping down its backside gently, dancing towards the safety.
Armando tacked southwest to the shore where a land point afforded protection from the wind and swells. There was also a little barrier island there, full of cormorants who examined us sympathetically. In protected waters the lake was ridiculously calm, it was like walking out of a raging blizzard into a heated home, we were shocked into another world. The sun felt delicious and hot on our water-logged bodies and the rich smell of the tropical lowland forest wafted off the shore, carrying the song of birds.
It was a horrendous anti-climax sitting there in calm waters. Armando decided that we should wait for the wind to change. We were far from any kind of decent refuge on land and there was no turning back, we had a schedule to keep, with an overnight in Solentiname up that night and half-way down the San Juan River's 190 km length the next stopping point in the journey. We sat together in silence, subdued and exhausted; none more so than Armando, who promptly fell asleep, and we all followed suit.
After two hours of dreamless sleep I awoke to see Armando standing, silently studying the lake. The wind had changed. Or maybe he just lost patience. In any case we headed back out, ramming the little panga into waves that looked to me equally destructive as those of two hours prior. After an hour of slamming the boat over giant swells we made it out of the channel and eventually the waves grew smaller and smaller, until we reached Solentiname riding over a mockingly small wind chop. The boat journey had taken nine hours including the two hour stop to wait for the wind to change. Armando told me later, in the calm of the Solentiname Archipelago, that the wind direction had actually changed slightly, which had allowed us to pass through the gauntlet, no longer having to attack the waves head on.
Bill Allen invited me to a Victoria beer and we both sat down for a cold one in the warm, silent night of the Island of Mancarrón in Solentiname. Bill's back was a bit worse for the wear, with two bruised vertebrae, but we were both happy to be off the lake and in dry clothes. La Pita also had a small crack in its bow from the spare motor being tossed about its interior and Ricardo was at the dock patching it in the dark. Two days later we would need that little 25-hp spare, when we stripped all the gears out of the 75-hp by riding over floating grass during night navigation of the San Juan River. Despite the night navigation of the San Juan, the biggest adventure of the journey was behind us, though the remainder of the trip, which finished in Nicaragua's virgin rain forest along the Caribbean seaboard, had numerous memorable moments.
Bill Allen's superb story on the coast to coast journey was published in the Saint-Louis Post Dispatch in a five-part series that ran from March 5-9, 2001. The five newspaper stories featured photos I shot during the horse-carriage and boating trip across the isthmus, supplemented by aerial photographs I took during a helicopter survey of the San Juan River with Bill Allen afterwards. Mr. Allen is now at work on a book about the complete journey. If Bill needs to cross that same part of lake again for his book, he knows where not to find me.
Armando would later tell me that our lake crossing was the second nastiest day he had ever experienced in 40 years of lake navigation. I have no photographs to show from that most spectacular day of the journey. Even if I had an underwater camera with me, I honestly don't know if I would have had it out in that kind of surf. I carry with me only the grandest images of the lake passage: Armando's determined grimace and the terrifyingly passionate howl of Nicaragua's inland sea.
Copyright © Richard Leonardi