World-class Fishing, Historical Battle Sites and Unexplored Rainforest Make the Rio San Juan a Must-See for Top Adventurers

Last update: 10:32 a.m. EST Nov. 5, 2008

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Nov 05, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — A region rich with historic tales and ancient struggles, Rio San Juan, or San Juan River, which borders Costa Rica on the East, has seen its fair share of pirates, battles and entrepreneurs. Even the most outgoing adventurers will be shocked to find some of the world’s largest tarpon, weighing in at over 400 pounds, alongside Howler and Spider Monkeys, jaguars, anteaters and more in the largest uninterrupted stretch of rainforest north of the Amazon Basin.

According to Joshua Berman, co-author of the just released Moon Nicaragua guidebook (Sept. 2008), “The Rio San Juan is one of Nicaragua’s most alluring and remote regions. From the stunning natural and cultural attractions of the Solentiname Archipelago to the old walls of El Castillo’s 17th-century Spanish fort, Rio San Juan is a rare and serene part of the country … “

Connecting the Caribbean Sea to Central America’s largest lake, Lake Nicaragua, Rio San Juan has been considered on more than one occasion as a possible site for what is now the Panama Canal. Its start in Lake Nicaragua is guarded by the Solentiname Archipelago, a 36-island chain formed by the eruptions of nearby volcanoes, while the river’s entrance to the Caribbean Sea is a tantalizing tangle of smaller streams and estuaries. Spanish explorers first discovered the river’s outlet to the sea in 1525 and immediately realized the importance of controlling access to the massive lake. Used as a major trade connection for Granada, Havana and Cartagena de Indias, Rio San Juan caught the attention of 16th century pirates in search of treasure.

Today, the “Golden Route” as locals know it, is a top destination for travelers looking to explore untouched forest and ancient towns. Tours are offered starting in San Carlos, the town located at the river’s start on Lake Nicaragua, and continue to different points along the river. Two large natural reserves, Los Guatuzos and Esperanza Verde (Green Hope), offer hiking trails, lodging, dining and ecological centers. More popular and much larger, is the Indio Maiz Biological Reserve, named after two smaller rivers that run through it. In the surrounding tropical rainforest it isn’t uncommon to find turtles, crocodiles, manatees and jaguar. Various populations of migratory birds and indigenous monkeys can also be heard in the treetops.

Stepping back in time is easily done while floating down Rio San Juan. The historical village of El Castillo, named after a famous Spanish fortress built in colonial times, was a notorious stomping ground for Spanish conquerors and buccaneer pirates. Boat tours drop explorers off at the village’s port, where they can interact with the community and ascend the ancient military fortress for a sprawling view of the surrounding forest. El Castillo’s interior is now a historical museum with a small library conserving the fortress’ past. Horseback tours, canoe trips and rainforest hikes are all available from this colonial village.

Getting there

There are various ways to get to Rio San Juan-daily flights are available from Managua to San Carlos and take about 45 minutes. By boat, a ferry runs from Granada with stops at a few islands along the way. This takes about 12 hours in total.

Renting a car, hiring a car or taking a bus is another possibility-a four-wheel drive vehicle is recommended during the rainy season and takes approximately 9 hours from Managua. Managua’s bus transit is another option and takes about 10 hours.

Where to stay

Monte Cristo River Lodge: Monte Cristo is an eco-tourism lodge boasting trophy-sized tarpon and one-of-a-kind views of the rare Macua bird. Visit www.montecristoriver.com for more information.

Sabalos Lodge: Located along the banks of Rio San Juan, Sabalos Lodge features riverside hammocks for lazy days in the tropics and rainforest dips under trees filled with whiteface monkeys. Visit www.sabaloslodge.com for more information.

South American Fiesta ( www.southamericanfiesta.com ) and Kaiyote Tours ( www.kaiyotetours.com ) both offer tours to Rio San Juan.

Source: marketwatch.com

Nicaragua’s volcanoes, coastlines and colonial towns are no longer a secret among travelers seeking authentic Central America — and they have fewer crowds than neighboring Costa Rica. Yet despite the growing popularity of Granada, Leon and San Juan del Sur, certain places remain well off the tourist radar.Managua, the capital, is one of Nica’s most overlooked destinations and has long been dismissed by foreign visitors, who linger in the metropolis only long enough to change planes or catch the first bus out of town. Those willing to scratch beneath the surface, though, find a proud and fascinating city with a wild landscape and rich history.

Excellent restaurants and nightlife, cozy colonial hotels and a surreal assortment of sights make for rewarding exploring, and help put this land of lakes, poets and revolutionaries into context.

Perched along the shores of the Lago Xolotlán, Managua is a low-rise city of winding streets. Woven into its geography are picturesque crater lakes, with volcanoes to the north and south and the Meseta de Estrada mountain range to the northeast.

A city of tropical verdure, it’s also one of constant reinvention, an essential quality given the wounds that nature has inflicted. Monstrous earthquakes have twice leveled the city, once in 1931 when it was still a tiny municipality, and again in 1972, when five square miles of the city were instantly wiped out, leaving some 20,000 dead.

RETURNING HOME

Since then, the former downtown near the lakeshore, known as zona monumental, was largely abandoned. This forlorn collection of former museums, plazas and government offices was the bustling heart of Managua prior to the quake. Abandoned for a generation, the neighborhood is slowly being revitalized, and capatalinos (Managua residents) have recently started returning to the area.

The streets end at the lake, where the malecon skirts along a colorful assortment of lakeside kiosks and a rickety theme park. Morning is the best time to visit, when songbirds fill the trees around the parks and a cool breeze blows off the lakefront. Among the highlights here is the shell of the old cathedral, whose hauntingly beautiful facade is decorated with murals and stone angels. Despite promises, it has never been restored.

On a grassy plaza a few blocks south is the country’s most evocative revolutionary monument. The Monumento de la Paz is a lighthouse built atop the destroyed remains of thousands of weapons, including a tank, from the Sandinista-Contra War of the 1970s-80s. These were forever encased in concrete by former President Violeta de Chamorro. The nearby Palacio Nacional de la Cultura has impressive exhibits on the conflict and Nicaragua’s more distant past.

Also in the area are the Casa Presidencial, where current President Ortega works, and the Centro Cultural de Managua, the city’s former Gran Hotel. The first floor contains the Bar La Cavanga, a 1950s-era gem, which stages live folk and jazz shows in the evenings. A few blocks north is the Teatro Rubén Darío, a graceful building that was one of the few in the area to survive the earthquake. The second-floor balcony boasts pretty lake views.

There are numerous ways to experience the dramatic scenery (and perhaps see some wildlife) within city limits. Among four crater lakes in Managua, Laguna Tiscapa is the easiest to reach and offers splendid views over the lushly forested lagoon. A zipline whisks down the hillside (for maximum adrenaline boost, opt for the ”Superman” pose).

A short drive south of the capital, the Montibelli Wildlife Reserve has 162 hectares of tropical dry forest. Along the trails, visitors have spectacular views of nearby volcanoes Masaya, Mombacho and Cerro Ventarrón, and impressive glimpses of birds, butterflies and howler monkeys.

NIGHT SONGS

In the evening, Managua comes into its own, with dozens of lively, music-filled bars and restaurants about town. Not far from the zona monumental is Ruta Maya, an airy thatch-roof bar where a laid-back crowd comes to hear live Nicaraguan folk music.

For a denser concentration of nightspots, head to the Zona Rosa, an upscale district in the south of the city. In addition to trendy bars and restaurants, this is the neighborhood of the intimate Casa de los Mejia Godoy, a club (and nonprofit foundation) started by the legendary Godoy musicians Carlos and his brother Luis Enrique.

The Bello Horizonte rotunda in the northeast corner of town is another great place to head. An epicenter for party people, this area provides premium strolling past discos and bars, grill stands and fast-food joints. Wandering bands of sparkly, big-hatted mariachi musicians add to the fray.

Nicaragua could become an ideal retirement and vacation destination for millions

“Because Nicaragua has historically been overlooked by travelers and real estate investors [in comparison] to Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico, prices have remained extremely affordable,” Henkel Smith, president of Water’s Edge International Realty, said. “Nicaragua’s real estate market is definitely still in its infancy, but we see things changing as the number of foreign visitors and investors continue to buy up properties.”The country has an abundance of natural resources, beautiful landscapes and a government that claims to be welcoming towards foreign investment and tourism. Assuming the government’s expressed attitude towards foreign investment is genuine, Nicaragua appears to be an investor’s dream, offering an ideal retirement and vacation destination for millions of people, especially Americans and Europeans.

On the other hand, some investors might find Nicaragua’s political structure to be intimidating; those who perceive President Daniel Ortega’s position of power as threatening have been discouraged from entering the market. Nevertheless, optimistic investors believe that Ortega’s personal investment in business and tourism projects around the country are a sign that he plans to take a different path this time in office, and that the President is now trying to make amends for his violent past as a young Sandinista revolutionary.

Nicaragua’s investment hotspots are Granada, a colonial town on the bank of Lake Nicaragua, and San Juan Del Sur, a booming fishing village located on the Pacific Ocean just north of Costa Rica. Although a profusion of new developments are happening along the Pacific coast, most of the country awaits significant advancements in infrastructure, providing investors with opportunities to buy property in almost any price range.

Read the entire story here => nuwireinvestor.com

September 13, 2008

Heather Greenwood Davis
Special to the Star
Managua, Nicaragua–The beach butlers haven’t arrived yet. And the soldiers haven’t left.

But tourists who flip past this small Central American country in travel brochures fearing for their safety should take a second look. The country is moving forward and the lush landscapes and towering volcanoes that were once only an impetuous backpackers’ playground are increasingly available to those who prefer a hotel to a hostel and a backrub to a backpack.

Nicaragua is in transition and actively seeking out travellers who will come and see the changes for themselves. Many who have been refer to the country as “the next Costa Rica,” a tip of the hat to the southwestern neighbour that has become a favourite spot for North Americans looking for a safe, eco-friendly, virtually untouched place to vacation or retire.

Nicaragua offers all of that, as well as historically significant cultural options in museums and architecture where Costa Rica falls short. But its violent history, still fresh in the minds of many, has been a hurdle in the country’s struggle to attract tourists.

“People still think of us as war-torn,” says guide Marlon Rivera. “We still have that negative image.”

The country is peaceful. The war-torn era of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s that made international headlines is long gone. All that seems to remain of the turbulent times are relics and buildings that make for interesting tours in Managua, and the people who were left to pick up the pieces.

They’ve done that remarkably well.

The new Nicaragua is cited by many guidebooks as one of the safest countries in Central America. Cruise ships have been stopping regularly since 1996.

The number of visitors to the country has increased 7 per cent since 2007, says Tania Estrada, spokesperson for the tourism and trade department.

Most visitors are Europeans, primarily from England, who spend four to five days and upwards of $150 (U.S.) per day. Canada ranks fourth. The United States is third and other Central American countries fill in the gap.

“We are trying to fight that negative perception of Nicaragua,” Estrada says.”Nicaragua has beautiful places to go.”

On board a recent flight to Managua, the plane is full. There are babies nibbling on chubby fistfuls of crackers, a student group of teenage boys (and one lone female teacher) boasting of the waves they’ll conquer on surfboards, families of all sizes and businessmen itching for the seatbelt sign to go off so they can start their BlackBerrys.

When they land, they’ll venture out across the country:

The popular beaches of San Juan del Sur, the peaceful seclusion of Ometepe Island, the colonial city of Granada and the university hub of Leon.

If there are concerns for safety among these travellers, it isn’t evident. Snippets of overheard conversation suggest a different preoccupation: At a time when travel is expensive, Nicaragua is cheaper than the Caribbean, its beaches equally as beautiful and sunshine just as plentiful.

“Tourism here in Nicaragua is growing very slowly, but it’s growing in a good way,” says Estrada.

Due in no small part, no doubt, to the fact that in Nicaragua a middle-class traveller can live like a king.

Hotel and restaurants are constantly besting each other in a race to be the most lavish, the most luxurious, the most exclusive and the most upscale.

But you can also still find well-priced – and even cheap – accommodation. An expensive gourmet meal with fresh seafood, well-seasoned steaks and a cornucopia of sides will run you no more than $25 (U.S.).

New eco-friendly routes (including visits to organic coffee plantations) and artisanal routes are among tours being introduced to take visitors beyond the major centres and into the rural northern areas.

And there is a building boom afoot.

Morgan’s Rock Hacienda and EcoLounge – a 15-bungalow retreat in a natural conservation area – opened in 2004. Gran Pacifica, a combination owner/rental pool of properties, is being developed on the Pacific Coast 45 kilometres from Managua and will feature a Marriott hotel.

With obvious pride, Estrada rhymes off a string of large, upscale projects being developed across the country over the next five years; most of the investors are from North America.

Tax incentives and tourism laws aimed at luring international investors and retirees to the country are working.

Nadene Holmes, a former ESL teacher from St. Catharines, has witnessed the changes firsthand.

“It used to be just backpackers,” she says, sitting at a small table under one of two large Canadian flags in her café in Granada. “But now we’re getting a much higher-end tourist. Two years ago, to spend $10 on a meal was like, `How much?’ That’s no longer the case.”

Holmes moved with her family to Nicaragua in 2002 and opened Maverick’s – a bookshop/café – in downtown Granada a few years later.

But last year she realized there was a market developing for people who could guide newcomers through the initial settling process. She and her husband Camillo Calderon launched Maverick’s Details Management (granada-english-college.com/Mavericks) just over a year ago and have watched profits jump 15 per cent.

That’s thanks in part to the government’s commitment to attracting tourism, especially in bringing new flights from the United States and promoting the country as a viable investment.

“We’ve definitely noticed a lot of positive buzz,” Holmes says of the growing tourism market. “The interest is there. The change is coming.”

It is clear that, for the most part, any investor-driven changes will need to come from outside the country.

With 72 per cent of Nicaragua’s population under the age of 30, and 42 per cent under the age of 15, this country of about 5 1/2 is young, ambitious – and poor. There are more than 35 universities in the country, but at a cost of about $140 (U.S.) per month, even the least expensive of the private schools is out of reach to most locals.

A teacher in this country, for example, earns less than that in a month. There are hospitals here that you can’t enter without a U.S. credit card and Rivera says there are movie theatres where $6 or $7 will give you a private table where you can watch a movie while dining on steak – but you won’t find your average Nicaraguan inside.

“We have very, very poor people, middle poor and then rich people,” Rivera says. “There is no middle class.”

As if to prove his point, a truck that looks about three metres high and just over a metre wide passes us, filled with bananas bound for El Salvador. Another with almost as many men heading out to work on one of the plantations is going the other way.

The top industry remains agriculture: coffee, sugar, seafood, tobacco – but now there are glimmering signs that tourism may one day add to that bounty.

On the tarmac in Managua airport sits a mix of American Airline jumbo jets and smaller twin engines. In a hangar in the distance, a camouflage-coloured chopper bides its time. The present and the past continue to mix here, but Estrada says the country is moving forward, not looking back.

“The thing that you need to see is the country, not the political things or the problems of the government,” she says. “People need to visit to understand.”

Heather Greenwood Davis is a freelance columnist. Her trip to Nicaragua was subsidized by the Nicaraguan Tourism Board.

The Associated Press

Article Launched: 08/04/2008 05:25:41 AM PDT

BERKELEY, Calif.—In an effort to get travelers off the beaten path and support destinations in developing countries, a group called Ethical Traveler has published a list of the “10 best ethical destinations.”The organization said in a statement that many countries “are making noble attempts to preserve their natural assets, create a user-friendly infrastructure, and build an economy where their citizens share the benefits of tourist revenue. By bringing our commerce to such places we encourage their efforts, and inspire neighboring countries to support these values as well.”

To create the list, Ethical Traveler looked at environmental protection, social welfare and human rights in the world’s developing nations. The honorees on the Ethical Traveler’s list, in alphabetical order, are Argentina, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Namibia, Nicaragua, and South Africa.

The organization used various resources to make the determinations, including data collected by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network; progress made by countries in reducing infant mortality rates as measured by UNICEF; and reports on civil liberties and human rights from sources like Amnesty International and Freedom House.

For more details, visit http://www.ethicaltraveler.org.

Source:  mercurynews.com

But European investors are stepping into the breach and the country’s property market is starting to recover from a spartan period.

‘You have to be somewhat of a contrarian to buy real estate in Nicaragua right now,’ said developer and advisor Jeff Cassel. ‘Two years ago this Nicaragua was right up there in the property-buying popularity polls. Hordes of buyers, especially soon-to-be American and Canadian retirees, couldn’t get enough of it,’ he explained.

‘Pristine properties in Nicaragua were plentiful - beachfront, mountaintop, lakeside, and everything in between and best of all, they were very inexpensive. This was the fabulous frontier, waiting to be explored and settled.’

But the US buyers dried up due to the election of Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua and then the economic crisis.

Now Ortega is taking steps to encourage foreign investors and is openly talking about new regulations to encourage overseas investment.

‘It’s not for the timid or for those who are worried about the country’s political uncertainties. But contrarians may win big here, as the potential for gain is great if nearby Costa Rica and Panama are any example,’ said Cassel.

Others agree. According to Robin Donaldson, a real estate agent, things are picking up gradually. ‘As Ortega refrains from pursuing an aggressive policy foreign investors and the markets are coming back to life, Nicaragua has plenty of models in Latin America for growth in the real estate sector,’ she said.

Charles Southwell of RE/MAX Granada said there is potential. ‘Nicaragua is turning into quite a tourist mecca, and it has huge investment possibilities,’ he said. He compares it to Costa Rica which has succeeded in becoming a popular tourist destination, an inexpensive place to do business and attracted global players such as Microsoft and GE.

‘The countries that build the middle class are the countries that have long-term success, and that’s what’s happening here,’ Finch said.

And some Americans are also taking the risk. ‘We’ve been getting lots of inquiries from Americans posted in Afghanistan,’ said Cassel.

September 23, 2007

Nicaragua’s Ciudad of Dreams

By JOSEPH HOOPER

The last time I was in Granada, Nicaragua, was in 1984. My “solidarity gringo” friends and I, in the country to support the embattled Sandinista revolution, were taking a break from the capital city of Managua, where it seemed like every other person had an automatic weapon slung over their shoulder. But in Granada, it was as if we’d been airlifted out of the materially deprived, militarily consumed country and dropped into a charming Mexican colonial town. The houses had red-tiled roofs and brightly painted facades; the outdoor markets actually had fresh fruit and vegetables in them.

We took a boat trip to a nearby island in Lake Nicaragua, on whose northwestern shore Granada sits. At the time I regarded the experience as little more than a brief timeout from the country’s real business, which was defending and preserving the gains of the revolution.

Returning to Granada recently, I found that the city looked much the same, despite the increase of cafes, a expat restaurant or two and some hip backpacker hangouts. The Catedral de Granada and the Convento de San Francisco were still painted in hot, jazzy yellow ocher and baby blue, and the place exuded the same humid tropical beauty. From the top of the weathered bell tower of the Iglesia la Merced, I could see the hulking Mombacho volcano looming over those tiled roofs. The setting was book-cover perfect, down to the tree-lined Parque Central at the center of town, festooned with gazebos and peddler stalls and surrounded on all sides by colonial-style buildings from which modernity has mostly been expunged or simply failed to take root. The horse-drawn carriages that waited by the Parque were almost overkill. “Granada is like a time warp,” one well-to-do Managuan lady sniffed to me at a party I went to later. “Nothing happens … except tourists.”

Indeed, the tables have turned since my last visit. After a war-exhausted citizenry voted out the Sandinistas in 1990, the conservative governments that followed promoted a consumer economy and courted foreign investment aggressively enough that in the last three years or so, a tipping point has been reached. Tourism, once the dessert option in Nicaragua, is now the main course, and one of the country’s chief sources of hard cash. Understandably so. Packed into an area the size of Louisiana are some of the best aspects of the entire Central American isthmus: huge tracts of forests teeming with endangered species, like in Costa Rica; the kind of sultry colonial cities you’d find in Guatemala; and unsullied surfing beaches as good as those in El Salvador. Nowhere are these pleasures more centralized than in Nicaragua’s Pacific southwest, in and around Granada. There’s a local expression: “Granada is Nicaragua; the rest is just mountains.”

Founded by the conquistador Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba in 1524, Granada is the oldest city in Nicaragua — although Leon, to the northwest, vies for the title (it was founded the same year). Truth be told, austere Leon is better preserved, but its touristic comforts are still in an early stage of development. Granada, by contrast, is the showoff. Its felicitous location by immense Lake Nicaragua (the 10th-largest freshwater lake in the world) made it a wealthy trading center and a magnet for pirates and other firebrands, who once sacked and burned the city.

If the town’s most historic buildings have been rebuilt many times over, somehow the idea of colonial elegance is the one thing that has been flawlessly maintained. In fact, escaping many of the turmoils of Nicaragua’s recent past has been Granada’s particular genius; the city was mostly hors de combat during the revolution. The city fathers were — and still are — more preoccupied with family bloodlines and old historical battles, in a way that would be recognizable to anyone familiar with the American Old South. Granada is even famous for older folks passing the late afternoon on their front-porch rocking chairs, catching the breeze off the lake. This is a city of porch philosophers, not revolutionary martyrs.

One morning I paid a call on Granada’s leading citizen, Gabriel Pasos Wolff, 86, one of the owners of the venerable Hotel Alhambra and an owlish doyen of the rocking-chair set. Pasos and his wife live just cater-corner to the hotel (with its atypical Moorish-Vegas facade) in a mansion filled with dour oil portraits that could pass for a colonial museum. He served me an iced tea and graciously offered up a pocket history of Granada, with an emphasis on the defining catastrophe of another era, the sacking of the city in 1856 by the American William Walker. He led his own private army in a bizarre effort to conquer Nicaragua and install himself as president. (The United States government briefly recognized Walker’s claim before the warring Granada and León factions united to drive him out.) “Granada is like the Ave Fénix,” Pasos declaimed, the phoenix rising from the ashes.

A vivid sense of history and tradition is one of the place’s most enduring charms, even when it erupts at 6:30 a.m. Early one morning I was blown out of bed at the Alhambra by booming, cannonlike sounds. I rushed out into the street and caught up to the procession of San Antonio, a ragtag army of local schoolkids led by teenage girls in short brown skirts and high leather boots doing the pompom-and-baton shake and shimmy. Behind them followed younger girls dressed up in white nuns’ habits and little boys in monks’ cassocks, holding miniature prayer books. The whole procession, powered by a cacophonous brass band in the rear, redounded to the greater glory of San Antonio. Later that morning over breakfast, I asked an Alhambra waiter what San Antonio had ever done to deserve this. “He’s a saint, so we adore him,” he told me, “but I don’t remember. Ask a padre.”

The rhythm of a Granada stay often goes something like this: the early mornings and the evenings are for city pleasures. When the heat begins to build toward noon, it’s time to head into the surrounding naturaleza. Although a bunch of outdoor-excursion companies have lately sprung up here, I headed out with two friends of friends of friends: Pomares Salmerón, a young naturalist who runs his family’s private nature preserve near Managua, and Alain Creusot, a French volcanologist in his early 60s whose final ambition is to climb and study every volcano in the New World, from the Aleutian Islands to Tierra del Fuego.

In Salmeron’s S.U.V., we chugged up the paved switchbacks that took us to the upper reaches of the Mombacho volcano cloud forest, a curtain of green occasionally broken by the red flower of the malinche tree. We stashed the vehicle at the ranger hut and hiked a trail to a lookout above the volcano’s largest crater. Mombacho hasn’t had a proper eruption in centuries, which has allowed the crater to evolve into a huge sunken bowl of vegetation. It’s a nature preserve within a nature preserve, inhabited by howler monkeys and — so people say — some small jungle cats. Salmeron said the crater has become a kind of sacred site for the pagan shamans who operate out of the surrounding towns known as pueblos brujos (“warlock towns”).

As we cut back to the road and the steep climb toward the summit, Creusot expounded on the country’s state of affairs. One of the few foreigners who chose to stay in ’79, when the insurrection against the United States-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza erupted, Creusot directed journalists and Sandinista fighters to the abandoned cars and gas supplies at the French Embassy and joined them for rides through the urban battlefield. Having faced danger to witness a new country being born, he feels personally let down at how things have turned out. Nicaragua is enduring a severe energy shortage. Ortega, back in power, is now regarded as merely a man of the back-room deal. And the U.S. State Department pegs the country as the poorest in Latin America (which, for anyone who has spent time in Honduras, is truly remarkable). “Nicaragua, which is the richest country in Latin America from all points of view, is last,” Creusot said. “This I cannot accept.”

At last the cloud cover broke and we were granted a view down the lake. Zapatera Island emerged, known for its pre-Columbian archeological sites and, more grandly still, Ometepe, one of the largest freshwater islands in the world, with its smoldering Concepción volcano. Another spot gave us a view of Las Isletas, which stretch out just beyond the Granada shore. Formed by a Mombacho avalanche eons ago, they looked from this distance like pearls from a broken necklace scattered over the water’s surface. They are indeed tiny, as I saw later while exploring them by kayak. Most islands are big enough to accommodate only a single thing: a school, say, or a cemetery for the peasant fishermen who get around in old wooden rowboats. Some have been snapped up by wealthy Nicaraguans and foreigners for vacation homes. And others look like science experiments gone awry. One island has a resident population of scrawny kittens, another a fast-breeding colony of spider monkeys (reportedly descendants of an original few dropped off by a local biologist).

Another day we drove to Masaya, just outside Granada. Of modest size and lumpy shape, Masaya nonetheless impresses with its sheer volcanism. Plumes of sulfurous smoke rise from its crater with industrial constancy. As we peered down, a flock of parakeets zipped over the surrounding green field, hovered overhead and then dove in formation into the crater in what looked to be a highly organized suicide mission. The birds, Creusot explained, spent the night down there, breathing currents of fresh air sucked into the pit by the high temperatures. They can have it. At one point in our visit, the wind shifted and we found ourselves in a sulfuric whiteout.

We made it to the top of the crater’s lip and took the measure of the 33-foot cross planted there, first erected by the Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s to counter the bad vibes from the volcano, which they regarded, not insensibly, as the gates of hell. Local lore has it that the pre-Columbian Chorotega priests sacrificed virgins down there. In Nicaragua, Christian theology always seems to be at war with a landscape that feels more pagan. Even on Mombacho, as quiet a volcano as you’ll find, I had crossed the old battle lines. On a canopy tour, harnessed to a zip line cable and flying from giant tree to tree, I was joined by about 40 high school evangelicals on a mission from Omaha. One girl asked me if I was a Christian, and as there are no atheists 40 feet off the ground, I answered truthfully, “No, but I’m a fan of Jesus.”

Back in Granada, I paid a call on the Costa Rican expat Glenda Castro Navarro at El Tercer Ojo (the Third Eye), a cafe and restaurant decorated with Buddhist and Hindu icons that she opened four years ago with her husband, the French painter Jean Marc Calvet. “The Third Eye means ‘Open your eyes and see,’ ” Castro said. “I try to follow many of the teachings of Buddhism, and here it is very Catholic, so people say this is a very diabolic thing.” Castro can grow impatient with the town’s sedulous pace (“things pass so slowly here, it’s unreal”), lacking perhaps the native affection of her friend who joined us, the filmmaker Mariano Maran. “Mi Musica,” Maran’s film about Nicaraguan music, had been playing around town. “To die a Granadino is tremendously powerful,” he said. “My mother is 93, she still lives here, she still sings, she still drinks.”

For someone like MarÃn, Granada’s pull is internal, the force of family and shared history. (“I’m like an elephant; I always come back home.”) But as the very existence of El Tercer Ojo makes plain, all sorts of people are drawn into the city’s colonial vortex for all sorts of reasons. The paradox of Granada is that its aura of antique timelessness is the very thing that attracts the restless New Agers and the bohemians. And for this reason, there is a whiff of improbability: Granada of the somnolent heat and the aristocratic airs bring reconceived by foreign visitors as a model of town-and-country multisport efficiency and as an exotic stage for private obsessions. But the beauty of the place is that the different Granadas don’t collide. They rub off on one another in lively, unpredictable ways.

On my next to last night in town, I settled in for dinner at Alabama Rib Shack Bar and Grill, which everyone knows as Jimmy Three-Fingers, a few blocks from the Parque. (The baby-back ribs are first-rate.) After dinner, the proprietor, a singer-contractor-chef from Florida’s Gulf Coast by the name of Jimmy Three-Fingers — he had an accident with a table saw — belts out Jimmy Buffet and John Denver songs in a phlegmy, nicotine-stained voice to a barroom half full of nonplussed Nicaraguans and curious stray gringos. I suggested “Margaritaville.” (When in Rome. …) “Back on the Gulf Coast, the tip jar used to have a sign on it,” he shot back. “ ‘Requests: 5 cents. “Margaritaville”: $25.’ ” Repertory notwithstanding, his young Granadina girlfriend was enchanted. Hands beatifically pressed to her chest, she cooed, “I surrender every time he sings.”

The moment reminded me of something the poet and former Sandinista operative Gioconda Belli had told me before my trip. “If there is a city that has been changed by tourism, it’s Granada,” she said. But unlike some other picturesque spots I can think of, Granada hasn’t become an imitation of itself. There is room for both the ridiculous and the sublime — a festival in February, for instance, when some 200 poets declaim their verses from church atriums within earshot of Jimmy Three-Fingers’ microphone. “It feels much more cosmopolitan,” Belli said approvingly. But still, somehow, like Granada.

ESSENTIALS GRANADA, NICARAGUA

Getting There

There is a small airport outside of Granada, but it’s easiest to fly into Managua. From there, it’s about an hour by car to the city center.

Guides and Logistics

Tours Nicaragua (www.toursnicaragua.com) and Nicaragua Adventures (www.nica-adventures.com) can arrange private trips to the country, covering culture, nature and adventure. Both can plan either an entire trip or just basics like hotels and transportation. (Unless you’re comfortable with chaotic driving conditions, do not rent your own car.) Mombotour (www.mombotour.com) conducts day trips around Granada, including the canopy tour on Mombacho and kayaking tours of Lake Nicaragua (from about $25 to $51 per person).

Hotels

La Gran Francia Hotel and Restaurant. The top luxury hotel in town, with an elegant Nica-Euro fusion restaurant (entrees $9 to $20). 011-505-552-6000; www.lagranfrancia.com; doubles from $105. Hotel Alhambra. A venerable classic, if a little rough around the edges. 011-505-552-4486; www.hotelalhambra.com.ni; doubles from $55. Hotel Patio del Malinche. Basic but lovely small colonial hotel. 011-505-552-2235; www.patiodelmalinche.com; doubles from $67.

Restaurants and Cafes

Alabama Rib Shack Bar. and Grill First-rate American grub with a Latin American theme. Calle El Consulado; 011-505-552-8115; entrees $4.50 to $9.50. Las Colinas del Sur. Pure down-home Nicaragua outside of the city center, specializing in fresh fish from the lake. Shell Palmira; 011-505-552-3492; entrees $7 to $14. El Zaguan. Granada’s best traditional churrasco-style steakhouse. Calle El Arsenal; 011-505-552-6451; entrees $7 to $11. The cafes El Tercer Ojo (Calle El Arsenal; 011-505-552-6451) and Café Dec Arte (Calle Calzada; 011-505-552-6461) are Granada’s twin temples of expat bohemiana.

Monday » May 5 » 2008

Tourists discover peaceful Nicaragua

The historic colonial city of Granada is a well preserved cultural oasis

Saturday, May 03, 2008

If Granada invokes the heady smell of orange blossoms, the lavish Moorish-styled Alhambra or the rhythms of flamenco guitar, you’ve travelled too far. On this side of the Atlantic ocean, the Nicaraguan city of Granada is squeezed between the hulking Mombacho volcano and Lago Cocibolca, 20th largest lake in the world.

Craig Baskett and Eva Logan have just returned from there.

As Nicaragua celebrates its second decade of peace, tourists are discovering Granada as one of the most attractive historic centres in Central America.

“Over the years we’ve spent a fair bit of time in Mexico and Guatemala, and have always enjoyed the culture and food of this region,” says Baskett, who adds they became curious about Nicaragua after hearing and reading about the country’s safety record, charming architecture and great value.

MUST SEES, MUST DOS

According to Logan, when it comes to Nicaraguan culture, new and old, nothing compares to Granada, which is an easy one-hour drive or cab ride from the country’s capital of Managua.

Founded in 1524, Granada is today one of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas. Baskett says despite the frequent assaults from pirates and ambitious imperialists over the years, a good portion of the city’s colonial architecture remains intact. Add the narrow, cobblestone streets and courtyards cafes, and it’s no wonder this Calgary couple enjoyed the city so much.

Like many towns, life in Granada unfolds in the tree-lined Parque Central.

A vast square flanked by colonial mansions and an imposing bright yellow cathedral, here local artisans sell bracelets, rings and other jewelry, as well as other handmade items.

Baskett says keep your eyes open for the Sultan Cigar shop. Like elsewhere in the country, these are made from 100 per cent Cuban tobacco and sell for as little as $1 apiece.

After a day in the sweltering sun, Baskett and Logan retreat to their comfortable, air-conditioned room. Like the other nine rooms in Casa de San Francisco, this one overlooks a traditional colonial garden courtyard. (Casa San Francisco: 207 Calle Corral; 505-552-8235; casasanfrancisco.com; $60 a night for double occupancy and with breakfast.)

By mid-afternoon, other hotel guests, also looking to cool down, join them poolside. Happy hour is well underway offering the second best bargain of the day: four bottles of Tona, the local lager, for $3.

It’s here from this vantage point that Baskett comes to realize his imaginings of a dangerous Nicaragua, land of Contras and Sandinistas were clearly outdated.

“At Cafe Deliet, which is on the spacious front porch of Hotel Alhambra overlooking the parque, you can feast on tender beef and tasty chicken dishes,” says Logan.

“Grilled fish straight from the lake is also on the menu, and all meals come with the delicious fries made from tiny, locally grown potatoes.”

After dinner she says, “It’s a good idea to pop into the Internet cafe in back of the hotel where they sell Eskimo ice cream treats, then head over to watch the teenage boys play soccer on the cobbles in front of the Cathedral.” (Cafe Deliet: Costado Oeste, Hotel Alhambra; 505-552-4486; dinner for two $40 with wine.)

Another way to avoid the heat that begins to build toward noon is to head into the surrounding naturaleza.

A number of eco-excursion companies have sprung up, each one prepared to take you to the upper reaches of the Mombacho volcano cloud forest.

Mombacho hasn’t erupted in centuries, which has allowed the crater to evolve into a huge sunken hole of vegetation. It’s a nature preserve inhabited by howler monkeys, and some say, small jungle cats.

Higher still, you are granted views of Lago Cocibolca (also known as Lake Nicaragua).

Las Isletas — a cluster of 350 volcanic islands — were formed by a Mombacho lava flows eons ago.

Baskett describes them as looking like “pearls scattered over the water’s surface.”

Today the islands are easily accessible by taxi boat or kayak. Most are no larger than a big rock. Some have been snapped up by wealthy Nicaraguans (including the country’s president, Daniel Ortega) and foreigners for vacation homes. But hardworking fisherman and painters (whose works are on display in the local churches and elsewhere in town) make up the largest populations, and one island has a fast-breeding colony of spider monkeys.

Tours, arranged through the hotel, run about $30 per person.

According to this Calgary couple, some of the best aspects of Central America are packed into the area in and around Granada.

There are huge tracts of forests like in Costa Rica, the kind of well-preserved colonial cities you’d find in Guatemala and unsullied beaches as good as those in El Salvador.

According to Baskett and Logan, the local expression: “Granada is Nicaragua; the rest is just mountains,” pretty much sums up their experience.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008