What a year 2020!
Everything stopped long before half-time. Forgive the sports wink, but the championships of small ball and round ball are not suspended as I write, in El transito, Nicaragua.
My name is Camilo and I’ve been living in Nicaragua with my family for a few years. Things were and are going very well here, despite some turbulence and rogue waves recently, closing off all possibilities for planning or simply surfing.
Lets talk a little about Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is both large and small, unexplored and little-visited. It’s easy to drive along the Pacific coast, taking in stretches of the Pan-American Highway.
Nicaraguan way of life
Heading north or south, you’ll think you’re visiting several countries, encountering different « bits » of culture or understanding « vida nicaraguense ».
Tranquilo, it’s often repeated. I get it. You have to take the time, the time to visit and explore, understand and observe for a while, stopped. Above all, it’s a chance to reconnect with the real, the authentic.
It’s a « vibe » that we’re familiar with in Nicaragua, hindsight and resilience, respect and simplicity. It’s a young country, which has experienced and is still experiencing complicated and episodic moments. It’s almost repetitive. However, the country was starting to get on the train or hang up the wagons with the world.
2017 had been a year that foreshadowed great things tourism-wise in Nicaragua. What potential? What purity! What simplicity! You’ll understand why I settled down here, in Central America, in the safest country in the region, in a former bastion of Central American communism, in the land of lakes, volcanoes and waves…
I was walking and writing right here in El transito in October 2018, it was raining hard, there wasn’t a tourist in sight. The impression is the same today, this curious feeling that time has stopped for a moment, in Nicaragua. The neighbors and friends haven’t changed. Neither have their lives and opinions. We think, and we think less. We talk little and wait for the storm to pass. We’re all wet and it’s still raining on our heads.
However, the smiles that accompany our morning greetings are very much the same. My family is comfortable here and doesn’t feel insecure, in any sense of the word. Whereas they, the fishermen, put themselves in danger on a daily basis. They cross the gully at high speed between two boulders not far from the beach to get out to sea. Here, we only think of tomorrow, next week is far away.
The land of lakes and volcanoes
Lakes, beaches, volcanoes, old towns, markets, waves, forests, coffee, chocolate, et cetera… Beaming, exploring and « getting lost » in Nicaragua is a real adventure. From north to south and east to west, it’s easy to see the country’s potential. At every level.
When more than 2 million people visited « the land of lakes and volcanoes » in 2017, you have to realize that even 5 years earlier there weren’t as many gringo or chele setting foot on the local volcanoes and beaches.
From glowing articles in specialist magazines to appearances in the Washington-post, Nicaragua is building its reputation as an authentic and unavoidable destination for genuine travellers.
