There is a new port on the shore of Lake Managua in the capital. Capable of handling small passenger ferries and pleasure craft, the dock cost around $1.3 million to build. It could be a boon for the residents of San Francisco del Norte on the north shore and may be a future link to a possible new international airport.Aeronautics officials have  been  considering a site nearby that small town at Huehuete for a new international airport, given the limitations presented by the Augusto César Sandino International Airport on the edge of the city. A runway at Huehuete was built in the 1980s for the military in order to receive jet transports from the then-Soviet Union. It was also to be the home of a small fleet of MIG fighter jets promised during the Cold War frenzy of those times, but that deal never came to fruition due to the fuss caused by the Reagan-Bush administration about the possibility of Nicaragua under the Sandinistas receiving modern military equipment.
Late last June, President Ortega officially inaugurated the facility, which bears the name Port Salvador Allende in honor of the last socialist president elected in Chile (until last year) before he was murdered in a bloody US-backed military coup in 1973. In a flight of surrealistic fantasy, Ortega recently speculated that the same fate may await him since, as he has stated, the aims and desires of the “empire” have not changed since that period of Latin America’s recent history. One big apparent difference here, however, is that there is no Pinochet in the army waiting in the wings.