Brito, Nicaragua: Fisherman Pedro Luis Gutierrez gazed from his porch on the Pacific Ocean and conjured up a vision: Someday, mammoth oceangoing vessels will sail in from afar and vanish into a canal piercing the jungle.

"The ships will cross over there in the middle of the beach," Mr Gutierrez said with the cocky assurance of someone who had heard a lot about a plan to build a rival to the Panama Canal in Nicaragua.

The coasts of Nicaragua may one day be busy with ships passing through a canal. Credit:Reuters

For now, it's a mirage. But while few outside Nicaragua took seriously the announcement last year that a Chinese company had won a 50-year renewable concession to build a canal, the plan is moving quickly. Scores of Chinese engineers have mapped the topography here, and deal-makers are scouring the globe for investors from an office in faraway Hong Kong.

Some time later this year, President Daniel Ortega and Chinese telecom tycoon Wang Jing will decide whether to give the project a green light, possibly unleashing earthmovers on one of the largest engineering challenges the world has ever seen, comparable even to China's enormous Three Gorges Dam.