Nicaragua Dos and Don'ts

A beautiful little fishing/surfers town. Nice place on the beach, coming up tourism, but still really pure. If you are here stay in arena caliente, it's in the same street as you get off the buss. Or find a nice cabinas. Arena Caliente is a great place, especially when you like surfing, a lot of local surfers are chilling here, so that gives a nice atmosphere. You get your own room for more or less 6 dollars a night. There's a kitchen and you share the toilet and shower. It isn't a new building, not for tourist with money or who likes luxury! So if that's where you're not looking for it's a great place to stay! In the night you have to go to the iguana bar or tsunami's! If they are closing you've still the sportsbar thats open, it's in the same street as the market(a great market with great comedores with really good food for a nice price!) You've also happy hours in la pelican, a really nice luxury hotel with a nice view, at wednesday and friday nights(maybe it's changed so ask the locals)! If you want to learn spanish as well, you can arrange this over there, i will recommend to stay at a host family so you will get to know the life of a nica family! I can't remember the name of the school but you have a really good school right on the beach for a good price! San Juan is a great beach place, to get in touch with the locals, learn spanish, to surf or learn to surf, and to enjoy the rum of nicaragua!

i visited a number of places in nicaragua-all along the pacific (albeit not as well known for its beauty as other areas such as bluefields). out of the places i visited leon was most definately my favourite, i think this was largely because of the local people and how friendly they were. Leon is not as touristy as some other places such as grenada but theres still plenty to see, and lots of volcano trips to go on.

Buses are infrequent but do exist. I got the impression that hitchhiking is commonplace and relatively safe (don't hold me to that, still use good judgement.) The ferries sail into Moyogalpa and Altagracia. The best place to stay on the island is the Finca Magdelena in Balgue. You can look up there website, bu you can sleep on a hammock they provide for $2.00 per night, there are other accomodations there as well. It is an Organic Coffee Cooperative, and they subsidise their income with Tourism. They offer many hikes and excursions, and cheap meals. Another very cool place to stay is with a Homestay family in the small town of Los Angeles. You can organise this with the Casa Canadiense in Managua, and I believe there are other places it is possible to organize this as well. Basically I think of Ometepe as paradise, so don't miss it, and stay as long as you can.

Set aside at least 6 hours to visit this city, it is chock full of sites to see. Not many locals speak English, and if you look like a tourist, you're bound to get hounded by kids trying to sell things.

Managua, A tropical rain forest in Central America,
Nicaraguan people in habit this tropical paradise filled with all sorts of animals bugs snakes, what to bring food a knife for hunting or gun for protection if you decide to spend a night in this jungle.
Language spoken here Spanish.