Surfers and turtles ride the waves on Nicaragua’s coast

By Jonathan Finer
THE WASHINGTON POST
Sunday, January 14, 2007

It was pitch-black and pushing past midnight on a desolate beach when I more or less gave up on spotting a sea turtle. My two brothers and I had braved a bumpy hour crammed in the back of an old Jeep as it rumbled across gravel and muck to La Flor, a wildlife sanctuary on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast.

The week before, we were told, more than 10,000 of the suitcase-size reptiles had landed in the darkness to lay eggs, the turtle equivalent of the Normandy invasion.

But for two futile hours, we had crisscrossed the shore in sweltering heat, flashlights drawn, with nothing to show for it. Even so, we had few complaints. Not a single structure was visible anywhere along the pristine, mile-long crescent of sand. And on a moonless night, flashes of lightning on the horizon shone bright enough for us to make out boulders jutting from the sea, washed by the gently breaking waves.

Then some of the boulders began to move.

“Is that one?” my brother Ben asked our guide, a young woman from the nearby town of San Juan del Sur. What else could it be? At the plodding pace one might expect after a journey from as far away as Alaska, the turtle ambled toward the palms that lined the beach, then stopped to dig its nest. As about a dozen other turtles made landfall all around us, the first one unloaded more than 100 eggs into the pit, buried its treasure with frenzied feet and returned to the sea, as slowly as it had come.

It was the rare sort of scene for which travelers have long ventured to better-known destinations in Mexico or, more recently, Costa Rica, Nicaragua’s southern neighbor. For centuries, most foreign visitors to Nicaragua came to meddle in its politics, including the American military advisers who worked with contra guerrillas during the 1980s civil war. But in recent years, waves of tourists have discovered that the beautiful country has treasures to offer and is working to bury its troubled past.

The Western Hemisphere’s second-poorest nation, Nicaragua is at something of a crossroads. In a recent pivotal presidential election, its voters backed Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista Front, which controlled the government during the civil war. U.S. officials, along with foreign investors in Nicaragua, whose numbers have surged in recent years, are concerned that Ortega, who was backed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and remains close to Cuba’s Fidel Castro, will impose market-unfriendly policies.

Those worries were dismissed in San Juan del Sur, about 15 miles up the coast from La Flor, where I spent a week last fall. The charming, Sandinista-run village has long been a point of entry for those exploring Nicaragua, including Mark Twain, who visited in 1886.

Simple homes sprawl up the hillsides, and the exquisitely manicured grounds of the Piedras y Olas (Stones and Waves), the town’s first luxury hotel, overlook dozens of fishing boats that bob on its half-moon bay.

San Juan del Sur has undergone a dramatic transformation since surfers began arriving in the mid-1990s. Initially the surfing scene was dominated by transplanted Californians and Hawaiians who relied on local kids to help them find beaches with the best-breaking waves. But after a while, many of those kids picked up surfing themselves, and now more than half of the dozen or so surf shops in town are run entirely by locals. Slowly, the town has been reborn as the country’s hottest travel destination, popular with Nicaraguan vacationers during Easter and home to growing numbers of foreign tourists year-round.

For travelers, San Juan del Sur is a cheaper alternative to Costa Rica, but it also offers a more authentic Central American experience, locals say.

But the rise of foreign tourism has led to a string of new and surprisingly tasty and affordable American-style restaurants, including Big Wave Dave’s, which boasts the best burgers in town, and the Canadian-owned Pizzeria San Juan. The town’s first English-language bookshop and cafe, El Gato Negro (The Black Cat), opened this year and maintains a vast collection of books on Nicaraguan history and culture, along with the standard set of best-sellers. A Subway restaurant opened there this fall.

There is concern that all the development could upset a delicate balance. “All the money coming into town has a positive side and a negative side,” said the Rev. Roberto Alvarez, 32, one of two priests who run the town’s large Catholic church. “It means better jobs for many people, but a lot of people are selling their land and moving into the rural areas. We have to make sure we hold on to our culture.”

If you go . . .

Getting around: Frequent buses ply the bumpy roads linking Managua and most major cities and towns, including San Juan del Sur. The town is three hours south of Managua. Some of the nicer beach hotels will send a car to pick you up for $85 one way. You can also rent a car at Managua International Airport for about $30 a day, or a four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicle, which you’ll need to get to certain beaches, for about $90. A taxi from the airport costs $50 to $60.

Where to stay: Rooms at Piedras y Olas (www .piedrasyolas.com) range from $120 to more than $200. Rooms at Villa Isabella begin at $50 per night. There are several clean, spartan and all-but-indistinguishable hostels in downtown San Juan del Sur where rooms can be had for less than $10. One of the best is the Casa el Oro Youth Hostel (one block from the beach on Church Street, www.casa

eloro.com/casaeloro/

engles/index.html). There is also a small bungalow-style hostel directly on Madera Beach that is popular with surfers and costs only $5 per night (no address, but stays can be arranged through local surf shops).

What to do: Turtle-spotting at La Flor Beach begins in August, and October through December are the primary egg-laying months. Nighttime trips can be booked from Casa el Oro for roughly $80 for a group of six, including round-trip transportation and a local guide.

Arena Caliente runs surfing day trips to Madera Beach for $35, including a lesson, transportation and a board rental, or $10 for round-trip transportation only.

Information: San Juan del Sur, www.sanjuandelsur.org.ni.

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