Fit for Man and Beast
Surfers and Turtles Ride the Waves on Nicaragua's Coast

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 24, 2006

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. It was 30 degrees warmer than the brisk New England fall we'd left behind two days earlier. 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 pivotal presidential election last month, 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.

"Tourism and foreign investment are what is driving this part of the country," said Jon Thompson, who moved to Nicaragua from California in 1998 and last year founded a bilingual magazine called El Puente (The Bridge) that closely covers the country's burgeoning new industries. "There are a lot of people worried that Ortega will undo all of this, and there is no Plan B."

Those worries were dismissed in San Juan del Sur, about 15 miles up the coast from La Flor, where I spent a week this fall. The charming, Sandinista-run village has long been a point of entry for those exploring Nicaragua. Of arriving in San Juan del Sur by sea in 1886, Mark Twain wrote that "bright green hills never looked so welcome, so enchanting, so altogether lovely." Simple homes now sprawl up those 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.

"When I was a kid, there was basically nothing here," said Gaspar Guadamuz, 23, who works at the local branch office of American real estate company Century 21, one of several U.S. firms with a presence in town. "Land values have gone up 20 to 40 percent just in the last year, and 500 percent in five years. It started with the surfers. I remember them coming to town and wondering what were the long things they were carrying."

My brothers, an artist and a college student, and I wanted to give surfing a try, though we knew it wouldn't be easy. Born and raised in Vermont, the closest we'd gotten to water sports was the frozen kind: skiing and ice hockey.

A company called Arena Caliente (Hot Sand) offered lessons, board rentals and transportation to and from a renowned nearby beach called Madera for $35. We heard the busted muffler on its dilapidated white van coming about a minute before it arrived, just after 10 o'clock one morning. We piled into the back and went barreling through town with the windows down and the radio blaring reggaeton, a Latin American fusion of rap, rock and reggae. The driver, a 19-year-old with flowing bleach-blond locks, initially introduced himself only as Don Bigote, "Sir Mustache." (We later learned his name was Kelvim).

With the surfboards stacked on top, we cruised along back roads to a hilltop above Madera and walked the last half-mile with our boards because Kelvim was worried the Jeep wouldn't be able to make the ascent if we got hit by an afternoon rainstorm. Because of the country's decrepit infrastructure, Madera, like most of Nicaragua's best beaches, is only barely accessible over land. Most surfers comb the coast by boat to determine where the waves are breaking.

While the setting was postcard-perfect -- the only building nearby was a beachfront bungalow, which serves tasty snacks and rents a few spartan rooms for less than $5 a night -- the surfing was a bit of a struggle. We started small, steering well clear of the giant pipelines curling a quarter-mile out from shore. We lay flat on the boards as the waves came in, paddled furiously with our arms as they passed under us, and tried to propel ourselves to our feet in one motion, as the board started to charge toward shore with the rushing water.

Most of the time, we wiped out within seconds. Despite our failings, the instructors were tireless and good-natured, offering advice or well-deserved ribbing. "Proximo," Kelvim kept saying with a smile. "Almost." But as with beginning golfers who spend most of their time in the rough but go home crowing about one great drive, we agreed at the end of the day that the few times we coasted smoothly along the surface made us want to try surfing again later in the week.

In the meantime, when we weren't stalking turtles, we took a day trip to the city of Granada, on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, Central America's second-largest lake, which is best known for the two pyramidal volcanic islands jutting from its center. A two-hour drive from San Juan del Sur, Granada is home to some exquisitely preserved Spanish colonial buildings, along with plush hotels and fine restaurants.

But San Juan del Sur, our home base, also had plenty to offer in its busy downtown, laid in a roughly 10-block grid between the hills and the ocean. A string of lively bars and seafood restaurants line the waterfront, including El Timon, which serves up traditional Nicaraguan treats for about $12. Those on a tight budget can eat much more cheaply at one of the dozen or so stalls in the town market. The closest you can get to haute cuisine is the beautiful cabana-style bar and restaurant at Piedras y Olas, serving a mix of Nicaraguan and foreign fare. Excellent ceviche and one of the signature margaritas run about $10. For night life, a few Latin-style discos are packed until the wee hours, along with a few dingy but popular pool halls.

For travelers, the town is a cheaper alternative to Costa Rica, but it also offers a more authentic Central American experience, locals say. "It's hard to find Costa Ricans in some of those Costa Rican resort towns," said Thompson, the magazine founder. "Here people look at you for who you are, rather than seeing you as just another tourist."

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 bestsellers. 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."

Jonathan Finer is a Washington Post staff writer currently on leave to study law.