Country Article / Postcards
The Nicaraguan Riviera
Date: 05/18/2004Dear Reader,
What a relief! Quiet! Rest! Stunning scenery and natural beauty! After a few days in Las Vegas, Nicaragua was like paradise. And then the sun went down.
"Look at that," said a business friend. "Have you ever seen clouds like that?
No, I had not. In the course of a lifetime, I must have seen thousands and thousands of clouds...and thousands of sunsets. But I never saw one like the one I saw this weekend at my house at Rancho Santana on the country's south Pacific coast.
It is the beginning of the rainy season. The ground is scorched. The cows are thin. Everything waits for the rain.
We saw no rain this past weekend. But we saw clouds. Lots of clouds. And looking out from our pool, over the broad Pacific, we saw the clouds coming in. And then, as the sun set into the clouds, we saw colors we had never seen before. What a glorious scene. Like a painting by the luminist, Charles Yardley Turner. Sunset in the tropics. We hated to leave it.
This is the Nicaraguan Riviera. Don't bother to look it up in the travel guides. It doesn't exist...yet.
This south Pacific coast of Nicaragua is unbelievable. It's one of the most stunning seacoasts in the world. There are beaches 2 miles long...with no one on them. There are mountains, along the coast, from which you can see out for miles in every direction. There are monkeys in the trees. Turtles on the beach. And few humans. Just an occasional fisherman. Or a man lazing in a hammock. His job is to protect the property. But since nothing ever happens...he just dozes.
But little by little, the Nicaraguan Riviera is being discovered. People are building luxury homes--nestled on the hillsides...or in the trees...or on dramatic points of land jutting into the ocean..on the Nicaraguan beachfront. Surfers are driving around the dirt roads, suntanned and hungry. A new road is planned. Developers are drawing up plans. Our advice: see it before others do.
Bill Bonner
for International Living
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