Lake Nicaragua

Lake Nicaragua or Cocibolca or Granada (Lago de Nicaragua, Lago Cocibolca, Mar Dulce, Gran Lago, Gran Lago Dulce, or Lago de Granada) is a freshwater lake in Nicaragua. Of tectonic origin and with an area of , it is the largest lake in Central America, the 19th largest lake in the world (by area) and the tenth largest in the Americas, slightly smaller than Lake Titicaca. With an elevation of above sea level, the lake reaches a depth of . It is intermittently joined by the Tipitapa River to Lake Managua. The lake drains to the Caribbean Sea via the San Juan River, historically making the lakeside city of Granada an Atlantic port, although Granada (as well as the entire lake) is closer to the Pacific Ocean geographically. The Pacific is near enough to be seen from the mountains of Ometepe (an island in the lake). The lake has a history of Caribbean pirates who assaulted Granada on three occasions. Before construction of the Panama Canal, a stagecoach line owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt's Accessory Transit Company connected the lake with the Pacific across the low hills of the narrow Isthmus of Rivas. 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 However, since this treaty was mutually rescinded by the United States and Nicaragua in 1970, the idea of another canal in Nicaragua still periodically resurfaced, such as the Ecocanal proposal. In 2014, the government of Nicaragua offered a 50-year concession to the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND) to build a canal across Nicaragua at a cost of US$40 billion, with construction beginning in December 2014 and completing in 2019. Protests against the ecological and social effects of the canal as well as questions about financing have led to doubts about the project. Lake Nicaragua, despite being a freshwater lake, has sawfish, tarpon, and sharks.

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Lake Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua (ˌnɪkəˈrɑːɡwə,-ˈræɡ-,-gjuə; nikaˈɾaɣwa), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the country's capital and largest city. it was estimated to be the third largest city in Central America. Nicaragua's multiethnic population of six million includes people of mestizo, Indigenous, European and African heritage. The main language is Spanish.

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to most of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. In the pre-Columbian era, many societies flourished in Mesoamerica for more than 3,000 years before the Spanish colonization of the Americas begun at Hispaniola island in 1493.