Pedrarias, interested in finding a sea strait that communicated both seas, dedicated himself to

organizing a series of expeditions like the one led by Gil González Dávila and Andrés Niño who sailed
and landed in present-day Costa Rica and later in Nicaragua. Thanks to the indigenous people,
González Dávila became aware of the existence of two large lakes: Lake Nicaragua and Lake
Managua; mistakenly thinking that it was a strait between the seas.

Another expedition organized by Pedrarias was that of Captain Francisco Hernández de Córdoba,
accompanied by Gabriel de Rojas, Francisco Campañón and Hernando de Soto, who left at the end
of 1523, with the mission of founding towns throughout all the land visited by Gil González and
Andrés Nino. Hernández de Córdoba visited part of present-day Costa Rica and in 1524 founded the
town of Bruselas (near present-day Puntarenas, on the shores of Lake Nicaragua), founded the city
of Granada and to the north of Lake Managua he erected the seat of León.

In 1523, Hernán Cortés had concluded the conquest of the Aztec Empire and with the purpose of
finding a passage or strait between the two seas, he sent Pedro de Alvarado from Mexico to
Guatemala and Cristóbal de Olid to what is now Honduras, creating a situation of quarrels with
Pedrarias.

By 1526, both the explorations sent by Pedrarias from Panama and those of Cortés from Mexico had
shown that the long-awaited strait did not exist in Central America (Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa
Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador). By then, six years had already passed since Ferdinand Magellan
discovered the Strait of the Patagones that today bears his name on November 28, 1520.