Lake Nicaragua

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Categories: Nicaragua geography stubs | Lakes of Nicaragua

Lake Nicaragua (Spanish: Lago de Nicaragua) or Lake Cocibolca (Lago Cocibolca) is a fresh-water lake in Nicaragua. With an area of 8624 km², it is the second largest lake in Latin America, the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world and only slightly smaller than Lake Titicaca.

The Nicaraguans call it Lago Cocibolca or Lago Dulce (the Sweet Sea). In fact, it has everything it needs to be a sea except that the water is not salty. Like any other sea it has sizeable waves, driven by the easterly winds blowing west to the Pacific Oceanand. It also has an archipelagos of islands, such as [[Ometepe] the largest fresh water island in the world and the Solentiname Islands, along with the only fresh-water sharks in the world (now mostly found in the Rio San Juan). It has also built a reputation of having periodic, powerful, and impassable storms.

The lake is connected with the Caribbean Sea by the navigable San Juan River, historically making the lakeside city of Granada, Nicaragua an Atlantic port. The lake even had a history of Caribbean pirates. However, despite draining into the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific Ocean is near enough to be easily seen from the mountains on the lake's Island of Ometepe. Before construction of the Panama Canal, a stagecoach line connected the lake with the Pacific across the low hills of this narrow isthmus. Plans were made to take advantage of this route to build an interoceanic canal, the Nicaragua Canal, but the Panama Canal was built instead. In order to quell competition with the Panama Canal, the U.S. secured all rights to a canal along this route in the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916. However, the idea of another canal in Nicaragua still periodically resurfaces.

da:Nicaraguasøen de:Nicaraguasee es:Lago Cocibolca eo:Lago de Nikaragvo it:Nicaragua (lago) pl:Jezioro Nikaragua sk:Jazero Nikaragua sv:Lago de Nicaragua