It’s a good thing the outfitter never told me about the bats. Choosing canoeing in Nicaragua for our annual week “somewhere warm in winter” was a stretch for me as it was. I had been canoeing exactly once in the last 40 years, and I am a Class A mosquito magnet. If I had known before our arrival in Central America that we’d be living with bats, we’d be vacationing in a condo on Kauai. We were, instead, guests at Albergue Solentiname, a rustic lodge on an island in the Solentiname Archipelago in southern Lake Nicaragua. On this night we were enjoying the first of several cooling moonlight swims in Lake Nicaragua, our shorts and shirts heaped on shore, watching the bats emerging from the eaves of our lodge, flying toward us to the lake. When I felt the soft flutter of wings in the darkness against my hair, I shivered. The bats were going out for a mosquito dinner. I had been told that these flying nocturnal creatures are our friends. They didn’t feel friendly yet.
My husband Art suggested this vacation destination. Art’s an avid amateur photographer and knew of Central America’s abundant plant and animal life. My careful research on travel possibilities included bus tours and itineraries emphasizing biking, walking or canoeing. Our final choice, the winter offering of a canoeing outfitter in Vermont, bore this description: “Ideal for the adventurer who wants to travel where very few other tourists have traveled, Explore Nicaragua blends the best of paddling and walking in a world of lush and quiet detail.” I found a great deal on airfares for the dates the trip was offered – from Seattle, through Dallas, to San Jose, Costa Rica, for $450 per person round trip.Still, this trip seemed a bit outside my comfort zone. There were no roads where we were going; travel is by motorized boat or canoe. Two of our lodgings had no hot water. The nearest city was Managua, 80 miles away. Mostly I was doing this trip to prove to myself that I could, indeed, be an “off-the-beaten-track” traveler. I said once to Art, “I think this trip may do me in.” He laughed. Three days before we left home, I was still having second thoughts. Then I heard from the outfitter. The only other couple signed up for the trip had cancelled. It would be just Art and me and the two tour guides – one American and one Costa Rican. I imagined a “Deliverance” scenario of some kind. Maybe this outfitter was just a front for a group that kidnapped Americans in Central America. When I told Art, he laughed again. I guessed we were going anyway.
The recommended packing list included tropic-wear clothing, insect repellant, a camera and binoculars. We included everything but the binoculars. I knew Central America was a birdwatcher’s paradise, but birds had never interested me.
Within 18 hours of our arrival in San Jose, Costa Rica, we stepped into a simple wooden 15-passenger boat at the small border town of Los Chiles for the first leg of our water journey to Solentiname. Our American guide, Jim, had hired a private boatman. We were a small group, and we were traveling rather than sightseeing. Adjacent to us at the embarkation dock were four fiberglass boats full of elderly tourists headed upriver, into the Cano Negro Wildlife Refuge, for a four-hour tour. We were going downriver to San Carlos, Nicaragua, where we would get our passports stamped before departing for Solentiname.
Carlos, our Costa Rican guide, kept an eye out for wildlife as we motored slowly down the river. He pointed out howler monkeys watching us from canopied treetops (they have the loudest call of all monkeys in the world); caiman (related to alligators, but smaller) sliding from the bank into the river; turtles a foot in diameter sunning themselves on partially submerged logs. Ibis and egrets – both large white wading birds – stood on long legs in the shallows, rising every so often in a great, slow spreading of wings, to find another more desirable perch. The closest thing to this I’d ever seen was the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. Carlos offered me his binoculars, but I said no, gracias. 
We stopped only once on the river, gliding into shore at the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border under the watchful eyes of two young Nicaraguan soldiers in camouflage green, gun belts astride their hips. They examined our papers solemnly. As we pulled away, Art waved. The soldiers couldn’t disguise their smiles. 
At San Carlos we got our passports stamped, standing in a short line surrounded by curious ragged children and a blind beggar. We boarded another, smaller boat – this one with only 10 seats or so, under the experienced hand of boatman Ramon Luis, for the 17-mile trip on Lake Nicaragua to Albergue Solentiname, our lodging for the next four nights. The lodge sits on a bank above the lake, open on two sides of the broad veranda. Brightly colored hammocks tied to the structural beams welcomed us, as did large comfortable rockers. As the sun set (at 6 pm on this day as on all others during the year), the solar electric lights brightened over the half dozen of us relaxing in the semidarkness. I lay in a hammock and, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed a rustling in the beams above. “What is that?” I pointed, and Carlos responded, “Those are bats. They’re waking up now and will be leaving soon for their nightly feeding.” I sat up quickly, searching with my bare feet for the wooden floor, ready to run. “Here in Central America bats are our friends,” Carlos continued. “They feed on mosquitoes, which otherwise will feed on us.” That evening, after dinner, we took our first moonlight swim, and the bat brushed against my hair.
Our room was the newest at the lodge. In a separate two-unit building, it was made simply of whitewashed wood. Scrupulously clean, it included a tiny, curtained-off bathroom with cold-water shower, sink, and toilet. A screened window faced the lake. In the night, I lay awake listening to the water lapping on the shore and the calls of night birds and frogs. I felt completely safe here in rural Nicaragua.
The next day, Ramon Luis took us up to Los Guatusos Wildlife Refuge. Lake Nicaragua’s waters were calm for our six-mile boat ride. Flowing into the southwest end of the lake, the Rio Papaturro was only about 20 feet wide. We motored quietly, the riverbanks lush with tall grasses. A four-foot iguana watched, motionless, from a tree trunk. A pair of howler monkeys –with their albino baby – moved from tree to tree within the foliage. The egrets were as common here as our seagulls are at home. It seemed odd that such glorious birds were so common – surely their majestic beauty should be a rare sight. Carlos told us that some birds live year round in Central America, while others migrate from North and South America in the winter.
At the refuge, we went ashore. We rented Wellingtons for a hike in the rainforest. Mine were three sizes too big. In the humid 90-degree heat, my feet slid in the sweat inside my boots. Once, on the muddy trail, one of my feet slid out of its boot. I grabbed a tree nearby to steady myself. Carlos cautioned me. “That’s not safe. Whatever living creature is on the ground when you start to fall will run up the tree to escape. It’s better to fall into the mud.” Ten yards further along the trail he pointed out a fresh jaguar track. I had left my mosquito repellant in my daypack. The rainforest mosquitoes found my unprotected legs and knees. From the top of my too-big Wellingtons to the bottom of my shorts, they raised red welts. I itched for hours.
Returning from Los Guatusos to Solentiname in late afternoon, we made a side trip to a rookery of neotropic cormorants. I had seen an enormous flock of these long-necked black birds on our journey the day before, swooping and wheeling over the water at the confluence of the Rio Frio and the Rio San Juan, the two rivers we’d traveled on. Jim said they were fishing birds. Their feathers have no oil, so they can swim underwater, but when they’re finished with their hunt, they flap onto the lowest branches of trees and spread their wings to dry out in the tropical sun before they can fly. As we approached the rookery the sun was half an hour from setting, the sky a pale pink and orange. Our little boat chuffed sturdily through the waters of Lake Nicaragua against a seven-knot breeze. On three small, low-lying islands, leafless trees, their forked branches clutching skyward, hosted hundreds of roosting, socializing cormorants. The boat circled slowly. Suddenly, I realized I was a birdwatcher after all. I stood up in the boat, borrowed binoculars, and gazed in amazement at the spectacle of birds, branches, and a sunset sky. From now on I would carry binoculars.
So I was ready when, several days later on the river, returning from a downstream visit to the Bartola Nature Reserve, we encountered hundreds of cormorants again. This time they were low on the water, flying together downriver, with synchronized grace, and so close to our river boat that, through the binoculars, I could see the muscles in their wings. 
We only went canoeing twice in our eight days in Nicaragua, though we spent lots of time traveling on water. As the only customers on the tour, Art and I chose the activities. At Solentiname, Ramon Luis ferried us to a different island each day. One morning we talked to local artisans as they worked – from them we bought small, bright carvings made of balsa and brightly colored paint to bring home to friends.
One afternoon we motored to an island where Art and Jim scrambled down an embankment to see local petroglyphs, returning to our lodge through a driving tropical rainstorm and four-foot waves.
Another day we walked along the artists’ path by the lake, from one small wooden house to the next, and met Rudolfo, a primitivist artist; we bought his largest painting as we left. It hangs, in our house, on a wall that was bare for two years, waiting for the perfect piece. 
We spent an afternoon at the lodge with Sandinista activists from the 80s and learned about that turbulent period in Nicaraguan history from a point of view other than that of the American media. Art even went to a Sandinista political rally.
We visited a commune founded in the 60s by poet and artist Ernesto Cardenal. In early evening we met in the commune library, as the lights came on and the mosquitos emerged, with three local women, as they discussed how to raise money to pay for three teachers – a total monthly expense of $270 – so that 26 sixth-grade children could continue their education. I understood only a little of their Spanish, but I heard their commitment and their need. I wished there were something we could do.
After four days on Solentiname, we traveled down the Rio San Juan to spend three days in the town of El Castillo, in a hotel built from native mahogany. It too, offered cold-water showers and sinks. In the tropical heat, cold felt good. The bats resided in the eaves of our room this time, rather than in the central gathering area. I listened to them in the early evening, chattering as they woke up and prepared for their nightly excursion. Now, they sounded friendly, not threatening.
In our first days back home, I thought with regret at first about how little canoeing we had done in Nicaragua. But then I remembered. Rather than following the itinerary, I had chosen to be flexible and spontaneous. On this trip I had been an adventurer, outside my comfort zone. Whether by canoe or by panga, we had explored Nicaragua. Every time I see a bat, I’ll remember.