Border Patrols Are Stepped Up In the nearly three months since Miguel Angel Rodriguez became president, Costa Rica has stepped up its border patrols. That count is probably inflated by prospective migrants who try unsuccessfully several times to cross the border and are tossed back, the government acknowledges. For potential migrants such as Alberto Estrada, that means more chances of getting caught. In Costa Rica, he can make six times that amount as a farm worker. Passengers try to sleep on the boat's hard, wooden benches to escape the heat and the stench of sweat and urine mixed with the scent of overused frying oil from the tiny galley next to the restroom.
Cockroaches crawl over the children lying on the deck.
Even so, the journey by boat is cheaper and more reliable than bus travel around the lake on a road that is often impassable in the rainy season. Once past San Carlos, there are no roads, only the river. But the migrants disembark at one of the boat's dozen stops before reaching El Castillo, the spot where the Rio San Juan begins to form the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Before El Castillo, both sides of the river are Nicaraguan. The challenge for migrants is to walk into Costa Rica without being detected by that nation's border guards.