We were up at 6:30 enjoying coffee and birding from our balcony when Gabby and John came to our hut taking pix along the trail. They were exploring the lodge grounds, which are pretty extensive along the river. We invited them up and they oohed and aahed at our location and the wildlife we could see from our room. They pulled up chairs to the balcony’s bamboo rail and Gabby took many pix of the anhingas, green kingfishers, and other birds and flowers in the snags before the cabin. They were hoping to see the caiman, but it was not in evidence that morning.
A day previous they had hiked to Boca de Sábalos and had talked to a tour guide there who said he would take them on a tour of Boca Sábalos’s Chocolate Cooperativa, on a tour of the village of Boca Sábalos, and on a night tour to see caiman. The tour started at 3 pm and was not be over until 8 pm. Were we interested? We told them thank you for thinking of us, but we weren’t up for another guided tour and had our very own caiman right in front of the cabin.
After breakfast, at which the German couple also asked us if we wanted to go on this tour, we hiked the back way to Boca de Sábalos up the hill on the trail behind the lodge again. Again we birded and saw some great new things, including a Bananaquit, many Common Tody Flycatchers, Squirrel Cuckoos, Olive-throated Parakeets, Stripe-throated Hermit Hummingbird, Yellow-throated Vireo, Black-throated Wren, Hooded Warbler, Buff-throated Saltator, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Bronzed Cowbird, Baltimore Oriole, Thick-billed Seedfinch, more Passerini’s Tanagers, and Jess’s favorites: Golden-hooded Tanager, Snowy Cotinga, and Olivaceous Piculet, a tiny but feisty woodpecker. I think the Snowy Cotinga was my favorite.
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| Snowy Cotinga, Golden Hooded Tanager, Olivaceous Piculet |
Once, when we took our binoculars down, we found a scruffy little girl standing in front of us. Her name was—what else?—Danielle. She was 6 and went to school in Boca Sábalos. Jess showed her how to look through binoculars, and she was astounded. She spied on her brother who was sitting on their porch at the foot of the hill. Danielle stayed with us until we’d unlatched and re-latched the barbed-wire and pole gates and walked through the cows and chickens on her family’s farm. She kept a keen eye out to ensure that the gate was closed and the wire latched around the pole each time.
Trudging up the deeply rutted, muddy track to the road to Boca de Sábalos we came upon several bunches of ojo del venados seedpods hanging from trees. Yes! We wanted these, but did not want to walk into the underbrush with short pants and sandals on. We’d already seen a small snake and Yaro had warned us that all snakes in the area, even the small ones, could be poisonous. So, we continued on, vowing to return and somehow snag the seedpods.
It was quite a long walk to the town. When we emerged onto a paved road, a boy across the way yelled out “Photo, photo,” so I obliged and took a photo of him and his siblings and baby sister. When we had walked down the long hill to town, we ducked into Hospedaje y Comedor Clarissa and enjoyed a cup of coffee in its plant-filled courtyard. The woman running Clarissa saw how hot I was and asked in pretty good English if we’d like a glass of grapefruit juice. She had fresh grapefruits. We said, “Yes, indeed.” The sugarless juice was very good and the coffee perked us up, too.
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| The Ojo del Venados hunter on the deeply rutted, muddy track to the road to Boca de Sábalos |
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| Children who wanted their photo taken on the way to Boca de Sábalos |
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| Beautiful flowers in the courtyard/restaurant area of Hospedaje y Comedor Clarissa |
We then walked down the rest of the hill into the town, which sits on the Río De Sábalos, taking in the vendors and the local fishing scene. At the dock, we pondered taking a boat back to Sábalos Lodge, but that would require a long wait. As we were pondering, a man approached us. When we told him that we were from Sábalos Lodge, he said yes, Gabby and John from Sábalos Lodge had arranged a tour with him later that day and would we like to join it? We thanked him but politely refused.
When we got back, I took a shower, but the girls came to clean our room before Jess could get hers in. She asked them to wait until she had showered. They had brought clean bedding—odd to change the bed on our last night here. I grabbed my journal and my drink and walked down to a little thatched river overlook near the dining room, thinking to laze in the hammocks there. The cleaning crew was there! I ignored them. When Jess joined me, the crew went back and finished our room. It had sprinkled on our way back to the lodge, and once ensconced on the overlook, it rained in earnest for fifteen or twenty minutes or so. The air cooled considerably.
Due to a little misunderstanding, we did not get our lunch—a chicken fajita we shared—until 2 pm. The “fajita” was just a pile of stringy, gristly chicken and onions, no tortilla, and not very good. We have been eating very few lunches here as they cost $12 each.
While the air was still cool from the rain, we decided to hike back to the ojo del venados. We found a long, peeled stick and a smaller forked one. Jess put on long pants and checked out a pair of tall rubber boots. She carried the boots and we hiked back up to the ojo del venado vines. Here Jess donned her boots and was successful in snagging and knocking down several pods.
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| Success! Jess managed to snag some ojo del venado pods |
Back at Jaguar again, I took my third shower of the day, and we sat around half dressed drinking rum and cold Tang with ice. Then I washed out a few things, and we both took advantage of the remaining light to pack our backpacks and lay out our clothes for our 5:30 am trip back up the river to San Carlos, our flight from San Carlos to Managua, and our flights from Managua to Oklahoma and California. My plane leaves at 1:19 pm but Jess’s does not leave until 7 pm or so. She’s not sure what she will do with her time. I am flying COPA to Houston and then Continental from Houston to Oklahoma City where Jeff and Lucy will pick me up . . . if they can get out of our lane. I hear that Oklahoma has been hit by another snow storm.
I can’t remember what we did for dinner that evening, but know it wasn’t fish and know we were the only ones in the dining room. The Germans and the Brits had gone on the Boca de Sábalos guy’s tour. Now that I think of it, I think we ordered the pork meal but the pork was tough and gristly too.
That night we were serenaded by the howler monkeys right outside Jaguar. Every time they heard a boat they went ballistic. We were also awakened by the Boca de Sábalos caiman tourers. They idled their motorboat right outside Jaguar and the guide screamed unintelligible directions in un-understandable English for at least five minutes. We were very glad that we were not on such an inane tour. Later Yaro told us that they probably saw no caiman because the moon was too bright. The caiman would have seen the boat before it could get close. Yaro proudly announced that he never took people on caiman tours when the moon was full.
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| A beautiful sky over the river on our last night |
When we’d settled our bill—surprisingly little, considering—Yaro told us that he would pack us a breakfast of two hardboiled eggs and some oranges and that he would see us off in the morning (he always got up at 4 am). He then called over his night watchman and instructed him to wake us at 5 am.
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Yaro, former Sandinista colonel and present proprietor of Sabalos Lodge, and Jessica on our last night on Rio San Juan. it was hard to leave such a wonderful spot.
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