10 Days in Nicaragua
BowTied Passport's Controversial Trip Report/Guide to Nicaraguan
First, let me tell y'all... Nicaragua was a very unplanned trip. A friend of mine who likes outdoor stuff messaged me spur of the moment and said, "Hey, you wanna climb volcanoes in Nicaragua next week?"
I said, "Let's go." We had done other adventure travel, so I booked a flight a week in advance and we started planning.
Beforehand, Nicaragua was not on my radar at all.
During the 10-day trip, I went from Managua, to León, to Rivas (port town), to Ometepe, and before making it back to Managua, I stopped in Granada.
This is not particularly a guide, but I used the opportunity to get to know the country, do some tourist stuff, and dabble in the local flavors.
*If you make it to the end of the post..There’s a degen adventure story for you
Thread Of Tweets On Nicaragua
This was also an opportunity to test out my DolarApp Card. I wanted to do this entire trip and spend only crypto/Bitcoin. The only time I used my own money was when I exchanged the pesos for dollars at the airport to further exchange for cordoba (the local currency).
If you don’t know what DolarApp is, it's a Mexican Startup that provides a physical card for Locals and foreigners with Mexican, Colombian, or Argentinian Residency. You can transfer USD, MXN, COP, ARS along with USDC and USDT and use the card as both a debit and ATM card. It automatically converts everything the USDC, and you can use it everywhere. If you’re a crypto fan, It’s great. I made a Tweet/ 𝕏 post about it and have a separate post with a service to cash crypto directly to the card if needed.
Sign up with this Referral Link and Get $USDC
Things to Know Beforehand
You can use dollars in Nicaragua. There is a pegged rate of about 36.6-36.8 that everyone uses. There’s almost no point in using the local currency. No one tries to inflate the prices by charging in dollars. Even small shops have the option of taking dollars. It's simple—the economy is bad, the country is poor, and USD talks. I often would take out both dollars and cordoba from the ATM and use a mix of both.
The country is safe. Despite there being a dictator, you will see no signs of it in the country outside of its poorness. In 10 days, I saw one police truck in a park and they were relaxing and chatting with a dude drinking a beer.
The country is poor and the cities show it. Unfortunately, they are the second poorest country in the hemisphere next to Haiti. The cities are very old and run down. Backpackers are fine with this, but many travelers who like more up-to-date things will be disappointed. Even compared to Mexico, this place looks pretty bad.
Things on average are very cheap. But so is the quality. I’d say it’s about half the price of Mexico but also half the quality. A ribeye could be $11, but it definitely will taste like an $11 ribeye. Vegetables were almost never fresh (I was told there has been a drought, and I showed up during the rainy season where a lot of food had to be thrown out from rot). Hopefully, it's better when someone else goes.
The food is horrible. The country's national dish is literally rice and beans. The other two dishes are Vigorón, which is yuca topped with cabbage and chicharrón, and Nacatamales, which are just a lower grade take on Mexican tamales. In fact, if you ask a lot of Nicaraguans what they like to eat, they often say tacos. Taco stands dot a lot of cities and it's not uncommon to see places serve chilaquiles, which is another Mexican dish.
Tour Companies I Used
Day-by-Day Breakdown
Day 1: Arrival in Managua I flew into Managua and was instantly met by some low-level tourist scammers wanting to charge $30 for a taxi downtown. Even after arguing with them in Spanish, they would only drop the price to $20, which I thought was ridiculous, but the weather was bad. For some reason, the local apps were not picking up at the airport, and there’s literally one taxi group for this whole area.
There are a couple of local rideshare apps you can use in Managua—Aventon and InDrive. Both of them can be signed up with foreign numbers and both of them can be used with cash. *At the end of the article, I’ll reveal how much my ride back to the airport cost.
All my Nicaraguan friends told me not to stay in the capital. They said there isn’t much to do. They were right. The city is very bland; there’s one nice mall, and the nightlife seems like a collection of spare tiki-style bars and sports bars. I’d like to assume there’s better nightlife, but I took their advice and simply booked a private room in a nice hostel for the night since I planned to leave in the morning.
I went to a steakhouse called Black Bison (they don’t serve bison) and had a decent meal. I also stopped at an AMPM, which is like their 7/11 or Oxxo, and bought a local SIM card for a couple of bucks. *Apparently, you need a local ID number to purchase, but the kid at the register punched his in and activated my card within a couple of minutes.
Day 2-4: León I refused to take those “chicken buses” around the country. I’m not trying to be on a literal cooped-up school bus full of people with animals and whatnot riding through the country.
In Nicaragua, hostels are your friend. Many of them have services that do shuttles all across the country. They can be anywhere from under $20 for a shared shuttle to over $100 for a private shuttle. We chose to take a Bigfoot Hostel shared shuttle to León. I believe it was $18 per person.
Getting off the shuttle in León wasn’t a shock, considering I’ve traveled a lot, but it definitely didn’t look as good as I imagined. The city is run down. They could charge twice the price for everything if they simply pressure-washed the place a little.
I also opted for a two-bedroom Airbnb instead of a hostel. León is a college town with a lot of adventure tours, and I really did not want to be around a bunch of sweaty backpackers. That being said, the hostels were like $12 to $40 a night depending on shared or private rooms.
The first night, I really just got a lay of the land, walked around the center of the city a bit, had dinner, booked a tour for the next day, and ended up at a local college bar with some Czech girls working at a hostel.
Saw a Local Chick piss her self and stumble home
Local Women: If you’re reading this and plan to go to Nicaragua for chicks… read this tweet. The people in this country are pretty busted in my opinion. No need to sugarcoat it. The diet is horrible, and everyone is either obese or close to it, or emaciated and dehydrated-looking. Faces are mid to just... very strange. I have no idea what it is. It’s not because of the indigenous blood. People just look weird in general. Obviously, most people are also very short being in the region.
The next day we made it to the hostel early in the morning to go sandboarding at Cerro Negro. I’m not a volcanologist, but I would consider Cerro Negro to be a pretty young volcano, first erupting in 1850 with its last eruption in 1999. This also means there is medium-coarse black sand along the volcano and tour companies take people on hikes with crude boards to surf or slide down it.
It’s a relatively simple hike outside of walking 30 degrees on sand in some areas. If you want to do it, I would also say buy your own cheap pair of goggles before the trip because you can barely see out of the ones they give you.
I met a couple of cool people on the trip that had booked a second tour to hike Telica Volcano in the evening. I originally planned to do that the next day, but tour companies are very flexible, and we joined the group to do both in one day.
Telica was awesome. It poured down rain, which meant you couldn’t see much down into the active volcano because of the steam, but I enjoyed it. Tour companies also do camping trips out there to see it at night if you want.
The next day I did some more touring of the small town in the city and took a late private shuttle to Rivas. The original plan was to leave in the morning, but I couldn’t be bothered to get up and leave before 9 am.
Day 5-8: Ometepe Rivas is the port town across the water from Ometepe Island. There’s really nothing there, so we got a late-night place to crash because the last ferry leaves at 5:30 PM.
I woke up in the morning and had brunch at a spot by the lake beach. Very run-down area. Saw no tourists the whole time until I got on the boat and met a New Zealand couple and a solo Aussie chick.
The ferry cost $1. Very cheap. Some people will also try to rent you motorbikes and such in advance. Tell them no. Since we were the only foreigners on the boat, we all became friends for the trip.
When we got off, we were engulfed by a group of locals trying to provide taxis and rent mopeds, motorbikes, and ATVs. The Rivas side tried to rent to us for like $40 a day. When we got to the island, the negotiations quickly dropped to $15 a day for a moped. One of the Aussies even got them down to $13. I didn’t see a point in haggling for $2 more, but I also wasn’t on a sub-$50 a day budget.
We eventually opted for a moped and an ATV, which was $45 and 100% worth the money since I:
Didn’t trust the roads considering the rain. The roads turned out to be very well maintained on the island.
We each were traveling with two bags and didn’t want to ride a moped with a backpack and carry-on case.
Wanted the option to go a little off-road if needed.
Where to Stay: I would opt for the east side of the island. Balgue or as close as possible. Plenty of hostels and fincas over there, and it’s the part of the island where all the action is. This is the side with, in my opinion, the best views and most activities such as the waterfall.
Again, we opted for an Airbnb/finca instead of a hostel. The ATV was 100% needed to get up the rocky path and we had to leave the moped on the street a good 200m before the forest into the finca. I’m sure people steal on the island. No one is immune to crime, but at the same time… where are you gonna go? We had no worry that anyone would take the moped and no one did.
Everything on the island is very informal. The Airbnb host hooked us up with a guide that’s needed to hike the volcanoes, and he agreed to meet us at 6:30 AM, so we didn’t go out that night and tried to get some sleep.
Climbing Concepción: This hike is no joke. There’s no true established trail. The weather can switch very quickly, and it’s pretty much a 40-degree angle rock path. It poured down raining twice and the view from the top was covered by rain, steam, and sulfur fumes.
If your passion isn’t hiking and you aren’t fit, I would skip this. It’s definitely not a casual hike. The volcano has erupted recently, so I believe the trail was more impromptu. Multiple hikers have gotten lost, possibly falling into the crater, which is why the local guide is needed. The total hike was a solid 10 hours in the conditions and it was even worse coming down. Days later, my legs still had some pains. Given I had also done two other volcanoes in previous days, I was not ready for the extra stress.
I drove my ATV home, took a shower, and went to a hostel called Raindance (which also has a natural water pool) and met up with some of the Aussie chicks I had met earlier. This hostel throws a Wednesday party that includes a firedance. Pretty much all the tourists on the island show up here. If you want to bang a sweaty and possibly limping backpacker (that recently hiked a volcano), this is the place to come.
If you like drugs, there will likely be a dude here selling weed and coke also. He says he comes every Wednesday. You can catch him folding napkin flowers for backpacker chicks hoping one of them might suck him off for a free 8-ball in the woods.
I had a couple of beers with the Aussies, who were all in their 30s, and we ended up being the responsible people for the night just being amused at all the British, German, French, and Israeli backpackers chugging beers and coming out of the forest after hitting lines of coke.
You Just Got Laid Off...Now What?
I eventually retired for the night and planned to trek the island more the next day.
The next day, we woke up late and sore, tried to meet up with the Aussies to go to this spring, Ojo de Agua.
But the spot we had lunch at cooked everything fresh, took forever, and there was no way we could do anything more than see a couple of sights and head back to the dock. Again, the last boat leaves at 5:30 PM. From Balgue, it’s about a 40-minute ride to the dock. (The island is quite big and it’s not the best idea to try to rip a moped and an ATV around island curves.)
We negotiated a taxi to take us to Granada at the dock. I believe we paid 900 cordobas (about $25). The taxis will try to charge more, but Nicaraguans are really bad negotiators, especially if you have options and speak Spanish. We might have even gotten it cheaper, but there’s a point where negotiating down the price isn’t worth the effort.
*June/July is definitely a lower season, so your mileage may vary, but the Airbnb we tried to book never responded, so we arrived in the city homeless. None of these cities are very big, so we walked into a hotel and asked for a room. They were out but told us to walk across the street. At 10:30, we were able to get a room for the night to rest up. They only had a double, and my boy and I had dates lined up, so we took it for the night and figured we would get something better in the morning.
Day 8-9: Granada The first day we had breakfast, found a place to do laundry (laundry places are everywhere in all cities; we also did laundry in León. It comes out to like $1.50 per pound), then we found a local tour place and booked a tour to the Isletas, which are a highlight of the area.
There are also other volcanoes in the area. They say Masaya is the best one to see lava, but it was closed due to a recent eruption. In reality, we were also a bit too tired to do another hike after putting about 65 miles on our feet in the last week.
The Isletas was the relaxing adventure we needed—an archipelago made up of rocks from a nearby volcano. One of the islands has a fort built to protect the area from pirates during the revolution. The previous dictator removed residents, and now many of the islands have been sold off privately to wealthy Nicaraguans and foreigners. You can actually rent one of them for about $200 a night. The guide drove us around the islands and gave a good history lesson. We stopped at one for coffee (didn’t want to eat because we assumed the food would take forever).
Despite having booked the trip last minute, wanting to hike and see nature, and seeing the extremely low average quality of chicks, I made a lot of conversations and set some dates along the way. If I wasn’t too beat from the hiking, dates would be easy.
Any chick willing to meet a foreigner there wants to smash. To be frank, they know that almost no foreigner is going to live there, and the time is short. It makes complete sense that she wants a break from the local dudes and maybe an opportunity to practice English.
So, I’ll tell you about the last girl I met. Brazilian (dad) Nicaraguan (mom) with long curly hair. Of course, she was hours late (at the time I didn’t know why), but we met up at a local hole, had a couple of drinks, and she told some interesting stories about growing up on the island.
We eventually made it back to the crappy hotel (that at least had AC) and the rounds commenced. Midway through the next round, she said, "Don’t squeeze my tits too hard." Something told me to ask why. She said she has a kid and is still breastfeeding. The degen in me took over... curiosity got the best of me... I asked her to shoot some in my mouth. I instantly switched back to reality and almost gagged. I don’t know what I was thinking. This kid had been breastfeeding for four damn years and didn’t have a job. The milk was not top quality anymore. She later explained that some Italian tourist knocked her up when she was 16, visited a couple of times, and never came back... what a shame.
We cuddled for a bit, I walked her back up to the park, passing multiple groups of drunks and drugged-up homeless dudes. We bid our goodbyes and I went back home to pack my bag and go to sleep.
Day 9-10: Back to Managua Both me and my boy traded stories in the morning, headed to a little cafe for breakfast, picked up our laundry, and used InDrive to book a ride to Managua.
Despite having more dates lined up (lots of chicks live in Managua; the capitals usually have slightly better quality), it was pouring down raining. I didn’t want to deal with the weather or short time frame (my flight was before noon the next day).
I decided to retrace my steps on my exfil, save some money by not getting a hotel, and instead went back to the steakhouse, ordered the biggest steak they had, went back to the original hostel I went to on my first night, and got some much-needed rest.
Pro Tip Post on Rideshare apps in Latin America
I paid 25 bucks for a taxi from the airport…On the wayback to the airport I book an InDrive for $5.4
Conclusion
I enjoyed my trip. I had zero expectations outside of wanting to try to see lava with my own eyes. Nicaragua is a beautiful country if you enjoy nature, but I can't in good faith make the slightest recommendation to live here or spend much time in the cities.
I also can't make any recommendations for food. I didn’t try any of the local street food because it didn’t look nearly as appealing as Mexican street food, and my budget wasn’t low enough that I couldn’t just find a higher-end restaurant and pay $30 for two full meals at a time to fill me up.
I heard there's also a bad infrastructure surf town on the coast (San Juan del Sur) along with some decent scuba diving, but I'm also told they are almost purely foreign surfer dudes, more backpackers looking to get drunk, and some hippy yoga chicks, so we decided to skip that area altogether.
If you want to make the trip, do it. It’s worth it for an outdoor adventure. I don’t know many places where you can ride a board down an active volcano. But don’t expect to have a grand trip.
Ask Me Anything Twitter / 𝕏 Thread
