January 15, 2007 by sacuanjoche.

 Eric Sabo, Chronicle Foreign Service Monday, January 15, 2007

(01-15) 04:00 PST San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua — A barbed-wire fence and several angry men armed with machetes are standing in the way of Philip Christopher’s dream to build a world-class surf resort.

The 46-year-old Missouri native has spent the past two years buying up property around Popoyo Beach, 17 miles from this Pacific beach community that is also known as a surfer’s paradise.

“Popoyo is already its own brand,” said Christopher, one of thousands of U.S. investors buying ocean-view lots and other properties in this once war-torn country. “Everyone knows that this is the best place to surf.”

Yet his $14 million project, which includes beach condos and a clubhouse, has run afoul of the Nahualap, an indigenous group that first settled in the area. Its leaders claim nearly 15 acres of prime beachfront land stemming from an 1877 deed, which Christopher says is part of the 93 acres he bought from previous owners.

“You can’t come into our home and buy whatever you want,” said Bartolome Lopez, the president of the Nahualap community in Las Salinas, a town near Popoyo. “You have to respect those who live here.”

Late last month, dozens of men brandishing machetes stood on the perimeter of Christopher’s fence, claiming a new ally. “They were shouting that (new President Daniel) Ortega will never allow me to get away with this,” said Christopher.

But Ortega, a 61-year-old former guerrilla commander viewed as a dangerous leftist during the Reagan administration, may do just that.

After nearly 17 years out of office and three consecutive election defeats, Ortega was sworn in last week to lead a country that has largely grown out of its revolutionary past. Ortega himself says he has changed from the days when he imposed a state-run economy, nationalized properties to give to landless peasants and fought U.S.-backed Contra fighters. In fact, he has courted nervous foreign investors by promising to respect private property and continue free-trade agreements. As a result, there have been few signs of investor flight.

“There is not even a thought of confiscations,” Ortega told a group of business leaders at an October meeting at his Managua home, which included Christopher. “Foreign investment will help reduce our unemployment problem.”

Indeed, his Sandinista party bears little resemblance to its revolutionary roots. Seven of the nine original junta leaders have abandoned Ortega, including his brother and former head of the army, Humberto Ortega. Jaime Morales, a former Contra whose home was confiscated by Daniel Ortega, is the nation’s new vice president.

“Ortega has given absolute certainty for the respect of property rights,” Morales said last month in a speech in San Juan del Sur designed to assure foreigners that their hotels and homes are safe investments.

Chris Berry, a 52-year-old former ballet dancer and a San Francisco resident who owns the Pelican Eyes resort in San Juan del Sur, says Sandinista officials have been “especially helpful” in his dispute over hillside property with a distant relative of Augusto Sandino, the famed revolutionary hero from the 1920s. “The Sandinistas have been assisting us throughout,” said Berry.

Most political observers say Ortega is well aware that Nicaragua — the hemisphere’s poorest country after Haiti — needs tourist dollars to benefit the impoverished voters who supported him. In 2006, tourism brought in $240 million — surpassing the nation’s coffee exports — up from $189 million in 2005.

Indeed, Nicaragua’s long stretch of white sand beaches and stunning vistas along the Pacific Coast have become hot destinations these days for not only investors but also retirees and U.S. and European tourists. Visitors are also lured by the nation’s volcanoes, lakes, rain forests and colonial towns like Granada.

Calvet & Associates, a Managua consulting firm, says Californians are blazing the trail, accounting for nearly 20 percent of U.S. citizens inquiring about property. An estimated 6,000 U.S. citizens now live at least part time in Nicaragua, according to media reports.

Yet property confiscations during Sandinista rule in the 1980s have left bitter memories and a confusing array of title claims that can make buying property a tricky proposition. Although foreign investors can still find good deals, lawyers and real estate agents say, buyers should beware. A 2002 World Bank study said as many as 60 percent of Nicaraguan properties lack proper documentation.

“Finding property with a clear title is not an easy task,” said John Margolis, who worked in the hospitality industry in San Francisco before purchasing 50 acres near La Bonita Beach, an hour’s drive west of the capital, Managua. “We wanted something that was still off the radar, said the 41-year-old Margolis, who plans to build beachfront homes.

Aside from Christopher’s experience, there have been at least three other beach area property disputes — including one that turned violent. Three members of a group calling itself the Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cooperative were shot and wounded Dec. 1 by security guards after entering a new development they claimed is being built on their land at Arenas Bay, a few miles south of Popoyo. The Nicaraguan owner, Armel Gonzalez, said that the guards acted in self-defense.

“Some followers of Ortega believe we are going back to the ’80s,” said Gonzalez. “But that’s not going to happen.”

Most owners of confiscated properties either have reclaimed their land or been compensated. According to the U.S. Embassy, more than 4,500 Nicaraguans who fled to the United States during the 1979 Sandinista’s revolution against dictator Anastasio Somoza have received compensation mainly by government bonds.

Vice President Morales has warned poor Nicaraguans who have lost redistributed land in subsequent years not to expect the new government to return those properties. “No invasions will be allowed,” he has said.

These few land disputes, however, have not deterred tourism, which is transforming once sleepy fishing villages such as San Juan del Sur into fashionable retreats dotted by million-dollar homes and $400-a-night hillside spas. Further up the coast are a growing number of gated communities, which offer American-style suburban homes and Nicaragua’s first golf course along the Pacific Coast.

“There used to be nothing but livestock and farms here,” said Steve Snider, who sailed to Nicaragua from his San Diego home 10 years ago.

Snider, now a real estate agent, says cheap land deals are becoming harder to find. Yet, he says property in Nicaragua still sells for about 25 percent less than in Belize and Panama, two other hot spots in Central America for American investors.

Meanwhile, Christopher is gearing up for what he describes as a “battle royal” if he and his business partners are forcibly evicted by the Nahualap. He expects a judicial order soon that will allow him to oust the protesters and fence off the disputed area.

“Clearly, this is not what the Sandinistas want to deal with right now,” said Christopher.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/15/MNGHJNIR5V1.DTL

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January 13, 2007 by sacuanjoche.

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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