San Juan del Sur
NICARAGUA
Not So Sure About San Juan del Sur...
By LYNDI
Thursday, July 17, 2008
At the urging of nearly every single backpacker we’ve met in Nicaragua, Aaron and I pulled into San Juan del Sur in southern Nicaragua expecting beautiful, unspoilt, Pacific beaches. Well… it was something like that.
San Juan del Sur appears to be a product of “over-tourism”. That’s not really a word, by the way. But basically, what was once a quaint, little beach town with great surfing and fun little restaurants is now overrun with backpackers and other tourists. Bargain hotels and restaurants are very few and far between, and instead you find the beach lined with cookie cutter restaurants without much personality. I don’t want to rain on San Juan del Sur’s parade – but I think we went in with too high of expectations.
When we first arrived in town, we found a little hotel about one block from the beach that had stuffy, little rooms for $15 a night that we eagerly accepted. We spent the first night walking around the town, running into gringos at every turn, and visiting the beach (that does actually live up to the high expectations. It was beautiful). We’d heard that San Juan del Sur has a good nightlife, but unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket – bar hopping in this place was not an option. So instead we called it an early night.
Our second day in town we spent out at the beach. The rain started around 1pm or so, so we headed back to our hotel, where we met two backpackers from Sonoma and may or may not have spent from 2pm onwards drinking the Flor de Caña we’d brought with us and talking to our new friends. For some reason, after drinking our rum for about 5 hours, we decided it would be a good idea to go to some bars and buy their expensive rum (and yes – the money was burning in our pockets, believe it or not…), smoke our cigars from Esteli, and play Jenga. So that filled up our entire day, evening, and night. Funny how that happens.
For our third day at the beach, we took a shuttle for $5 from Casa Oro to a nearby beach called Playa Madera that’s known for having good surfing. And because I didn’t make enough of a fool out of myself surfing in El Salvador, I thought I’d give it another shot. But actually, Aaron and I did much better this time. I think El Salvador is known for having great surfing… for people that actually know what they’re doing. Playa Madera was perfect waves for beginners. It also helped that I didn’t break the board this time on my first time out…
So we spent the day actually riding waves in (for a change), reading, and relaxing on the beach. The only problem with our shuttle was that it dropped us off around 1pm and wasn’t coming back to get us until 6pm. Well, come 6pm, it started raining, we were still wet from being in the ocean all day, the sun was setting, and it was really cold. When the shuttle finally showed up close to 6:30pm – we’d both caught a nasty cold. But we did get a beautiful sunset out of it.
The cold would stay with us for the next week and a half – I seemed to get hit with it harder than Aaron, but it sidelined us for a long time. So overall, San Juan del Sur was a fun, little beachtown after all. Not the all time best place in Nicaragua like so many people said – but pretty good nonetheless. Just watch out for the Flor de Caña – entire days go missing if you’re not careful…
