It is home to the largest intact rainforest area north of the Amazon, Ometepe, the world’s largest island in a lake, the Islas de Maíz or Corn Islands, a still undiscovered Caribbean island paradise off the Atlantic coast, open Pacific beaches and sheltered bays such as San Juan del Sur, which is also home to the protected beach of El Flor, where thousands of turtles come to lay their eggs every year.
The historical and architectural heritage of the colonial era is apparent in León and Granada, two of the oldest Spanish cities on the American continent.
Finally, Managua, the country’s capital and business center, where twenty percent of the population lives, is a controversial metaphor for the country, but since the devastating earthquake of 1972, it has been a city without a center. In fact, it is a single, seemingly endless suburb with low-rise buildings, with the ruins of the old cathedral, the controversial concrete structure of the new cathedral, and the pyramid-shaped old Intercontinental Hotel standing out as landmarks, apart from the iron silhouette of Augusto Sandino, which looks down on the city and its inhabitants from the hill above the Intercontinental. The legendary figure competes with the poet Ruben Darío for the position of the people’s hero and the country’s most famous son. Of course, the “prince of Latin American literature” and “founder of Latin American modernism,” as he is also known, has his own monument in Managua—in front of the National Theater, in a small park named after him.
The fact that Nicaragua, with all its obvious merits, has not become a tourist destination has to be attributed not least to the “bad press” that it has been accustomed to for decades. Regardless of whether written with or without sympathy for the Sandinista revolution, in which Nicaragua was one of the few post-colonial countries to succeed in overthrowing a corrupt and criminal government, media reports on Nicaragua focused exclusively on war, violence, and poverty, or on natural disasters that had once again struck the battered country. Ironically, during this time, Nicaragua has become one of the most peaceful and safest countries to travel to, while the tourism boom that has swept through every corner of neighboring countries such as Costa Rica has ignored Nicaragua.
Anyone with a spirit of adventure, who values hospitality and authenticity, and who can do without glamour and mass tourism will not regret visiting Nicaragua.