We noticed the Claro signs as soon as we drove out of the San Carlos airport.
Bright red-orange satellite dishes on the roofs of disheveled hovels.
As we drove through the rainy humid afternoon, we saw countless television screens flickering through open doors and windows, people gathered around to watch the colorful scenes.
It seemed every house had a dish and a TV and they looked so incongruous in this jungly, pastel-colored town at the mouth of the Rio San Juan.
Signs were everywhere advertising “Claro.” It didn’t take us long to figure out this was telecommunication, Nicaraguan style.
Wikipedia tells me Claro is the premiere mobil phone service in central America. People on the ground told a slightly different story that I’ve not been able to verify.
Apparently since the start of the year, the dishes have been given away. Word on the street is if the current president is reelected, Nicaraguans will get free cable TV for the next two years. If the party is defeated, the service will end in six months.
We Americans were shocked.
The Nicas were enjoying TV.
Some people said the cable stations included everything you can see on American satellite television. Others explained the dishes were aimed at nearby television towers and the TV reception was much improved, as in clearer–claro.
We noticed the bright red-orange dishes were far more prevalent in the poor Rio San Juan area of the country, than in the more prosperous west.
From the top of the castle at El Castillo along the river, it was a sea of Claro-vision.
It’s hard to begrudge people who have so little, a chance to see something of the larger world. At the same time, the ingenuity to get modern life to people whose river is their sole source of commerce is impressive. 
We passed a small house filled with little boys manipulating jockey sticks and watching a screen on El Castillo’s main street: Nintendo Center/ PlayStation 2.
My husband’s ATT cell phone worked beautifully down the river and he was able to call home on business with a perfectly clear signal.
Text messages zipped between Rio San Juan and California without a hitch. It was trickier to stay on the slow Internet via phone, but possible.
We really weren’t at the end of the world after all–unless we chose to turn off our electronic devices.
In a land where the humidity turns paper into damp softness, we appreciated the sturdy Kindle rather than paperback books.
I read under the mosquito netting at night on my I-touch using the Kindle ap. As long as we could get electricity–which Yaro said was strung down to Sabalos on transmission lines–we never felt too far from the electronic comforts of home.
The only question is, was that good or bad?
definitely tempered the jungle experience