After a remarkable visit to El Castillo, Spencer and I caught another riverboat, this one going upriver back to San Carlos. We went directly to the bus station and bought tickets for Managua. While we waited, we drank sodas and watched ancient, brightly-painted buses wheeze into the station and pick up or discharge their human cargoes.

This bus, below, undoubtedly sported the best motto. “Solo Dios Sabe Se Volvere” means “only God knows if we will return” in Nicaraguan Spanish. That slogan seems far more honest than most travel company taglines.

When it came time for us to embark, I was disappointed that our bus didn’t sport a wild Latin American paint job. Instead, we were directed toward an elderly Bluebird school bus that had been painted (appropriately enough) a washed-out blue.

We headed around the northern coast of Lake Nicaragua, riding over roads that had enormous ruts and potholes in them. The Bluebird’s shocks and springs had long ago been exhausted, so we felt every one of those bumps right in our kidneys. Sleep was made impossible by the bus’s audio/visual entertainment system, which shrieked out Latin American music videos at a volume its poor little speakers were never meant to handle. It was only marginally less uncomfortable than our ferry ride to San Carlos had been. And yet we both acknowledged that we were having a good time.

Over nine hours and 292 kilometers (181 miles) after leaving San Carlos, we finally arrived in Managua and checked into the Crowne Plaza, the pyramid-shaped hotel where Howard Hughes lived in the early 1970s. This was the last stop on our Nicaragua itinerary. We were here:

Continuing my reminiscences of a journey my son and I took to Granada and El Castillo in 2008 . . .

In El Castillo, Spencer and I inquired around town and found a native-born naturalist with a canoe who agreed to take us deeper into the jungle on the tributaries of the Rio San Juan. We were interested in seeing some of the animals (other than the domesticated species) that inhabit the jungle near the Nicaragua/Costa Rica border. We took two excursions with him, one by day and one by night.

Ironically, the first and most numerous animals I saw during the daylight hours were actually nocturnal. There were short-tailed bats (possibly of the genus Carollia) clinging to the sides of trees along the riverbanks, presumably sleeping and awaiting the evening hours.

We also spied some bright green iguanas along the riverbank, though they blended in so well with the foliage we had to be lucky to see one contrasted against a darker background.

As we meandered through the streams and tributaries, we caught glimpses of some primate species high in the trees above. They were so far off the ground — and I had such an inadequate little point-and-shoot digital camera — that I wasn’t able to get any good pictures of them. But we certainly heard them chattering as we approached. But we did get close enough to some of the river birds to get their pictures. This anhinga (whose name means snake bird or devil bird) was out fishing on a rock in the middle of the stream

When we weren’t focused on animals, my son and I relaxed under the hot, clear skies. Occasionally we’d look at each other and say something like “Holy shit — we’re in Nicaragua.”

During our nighttime excursion, our guide used a searchlight to locate some of the river animals, whom we saw first by their eyes glowing weirdly as the light swept over them. This juvenile alligator freaked me out a little. It was so primitive-looking. Looking at it at night in the middle of the Central American jungle made feel like I’d been transported back in time 10,000 years or more. He belonged there. I didn’t.

In contrast, this mourning dove seemed almost out of place in the jungle; I wondered why he wasn’t back at home in a big city.

This adolescent green iguana was very friendly; he would have come home with us if we’d wanted.

When he grows up, he’ll look something like this.

We caught frogs and caught glimpses of other birds that night. Unfortunately, though, we didn’t come across any larger animals.

So ended my first (and so far only) trip into a tropical jungle. That brief excursion birthed a number of dreams that I’ve not yet realized. I still stare at maps of the Amazon and the Congo and hope that someday I’ll be able to tackle those far more forbidding riverine environments.

Caution: dangerous generalization ahead.

When I was in the jungle town of El Castillo, Nicaragua in 2008, I was surprised to see so many dogs. I noted with pleasure and approval that the dogs generally looked cared for, well-fed, and to belong to individual households. I don’t recall seeing a single stray there.

The dangerous generalization is that you can tell something about the general happiness of a town and its citizens by how happy their dogs look.

There were no cars in El Castillo and no roads where you could drive one if you wanted to. I did see men coming into town on horseback, though — something else I didn’t expect in the jungle.

After three days at the luxurious Hotel Colonial in comfortable Granada, it was time for us to begin the second phase of our journey. Our plan was to get a ferry across Lake Nicaragua to San Carlos. There I would walk around the docks til we found a boat going down the Rio San Juan, talk or bribe ourselves aboard, and head out to the jungle settlement of El Castillo. This required a leap of faith on my part. I didn’t know for sure whether we could find a river boat — do you just hail them like taxis? — but I told myself that the last thing I wanted was a Cook’s tour where everything was precisely planned.

Little did I know that finding a boat going to El Castillo would be easy, but that passage aboard the ferry crossing the lake would be a very uncomfortable affair.

We found the lake dock in Granada from which the ferry departed and bought our tickets. I’d read that it was advisable to pay a little extra to get a spot on the upper deck of the ferry and to string a hammock there. I had no problem paying for a place on the upper deck, but in a fit of senseless economizing, I bought only ONE hammock.

What was I thinking?

I guess I figured that I would find a place to sit or lie somewhere on the ferry and that I would let my son luxuriate in the hammock. There had to be chairs, right? And probably an enclosed cabin to escape the elements in?

But no. There were no chairs, benches, or other accommodations. No cabins. Just steel deck-plating. We tied our lone hammock between a mast and a wall cleat and began the overnight lake crossing.

At first, it was pretty nice. We were thrilled to pass within sight of Concepción, the world’s most perfectly formed volcano, on the Isla de Ometepe.

The afternoon sun still warmed our bones. Spencer read Heart of Darkness as he swayed in the hammock. We looked down — literally, that is — at all the people on the lower deck trying to find a place to sit where they would be sheltered from the sea spray amid the bicycles, motorcycles, and other cargo.

We congratulated ourselves on the decision to buy upper-deck tickets. We saw people on our deck laying down and it really didn’t look so bad.

Many of our deck-mates strung up hammocks and looked quite comfortable in them.

Others on our deck found places to sit: not chairs, of course, but better than the metal deck plate.

The sunset on the lake was so beautiful that at first I didn’t feel the approaching evening chill.

Ah, novice-traveler hubris. By the time darkness fell, we were both getting cold. The steel deck seemed to suck the heat right out of my body. Although we weren’t getting drenched, we shivered in the mist thrown up by the boat as it plowed through the waves. By midnight I felt chilled to the bone, damp, tired, and miserable. I did take turns with my son in our one hammock, which gave some respite, but I felt so guilty about making him sleep on the deck plate that I took most of the time there.

From this wretched, sleepless night, I learned that you can never be too hot out on the deck of a boat at night. The lesson etched itself deeply into my mental library of travel wisdom. In later experiences with nighttime boat rides — for instance, my trip up the Ganges River in Bangladesh aboard a paddlewheel ferry — I made sure to pack warmer clothes.

And if I ever travel across a body of water with a companion, I will be sure to buy two hammocks.