San Juan de Nicaragua

San Juan de Nicaragua sits at the Caribbean end of the Río San Juan, and it is the successor to Greytown, the port that in the nineteenth century was the Atlantic terminus of the transit route across Nicaragua and a town of consulates, hotels and shipping agents contested between Britain and the United States. Silting closed the harbour, the town declined and was eventually abandoned, and what remains is a cemetery with British, American and German graves and foundations swallowed by jungle, reached by boat from the modern village. The village itself is a line of wooden houses with no road connection, surrounded by rainforest and lagoon, next to Indio Maíz. Getting there is most of a day by boat.

History

Spanish explorers reached the bay at the river's mouth on 24 June 1539, the feast of Saint John the Baptist, and named it San Juan del Norte; Governor Rodrigo Contreras set up a post there in 1541. Renamed Greytown in 1847 after the Jamaican governor Charles Edward Grey, it grew fast from the next year as the eastern terminus of Vanderbilt's Accessory Transit Company, which carried thousands of travellers a month towards San Francisco (Wikipedia, San Juan de Nicaragua).

What to look for

• The old cemetery - British, American and German graves in the forest.
• Greytown foundations - overgrown remains of the vanished port.
• The modern village - wooden houses with no road access.
• Rainforest and lagoon - the Indio Maíz country all around.

When to go

December to April for drier travel and more dependable boats, though this corner is wet all year. Boat departures from San Carlos are infrequent and dictate the trip length.

Practical notes

Getting here takes most of a day by boat each way on a sparse schedule, so a visit means several days. Accommodation is very basic. Rain, heat and mosquitoes are constant. The ruins are fragmentary and heavily overgrown.

Nearby

Indio Maíz lies inland; El Castillo is upstream.

Key facts