Is Nicaragua the next Costa Rica?

Latin America — By Bob Riel on December 20, 2006 at 1:39 pm

Mention Nicaragua to most people and the first thoughts that will come to mind are the Sandinistas, a civil war, perhaps the Iran-contra scandal. But those events now belong to history and Nicaragua is slowly gaining cachet as a tourist destination. This article even described it as the “Next Costa Rica,” alluding to the popularity of its Central American neighbor.

Here is a description, for example, of the colonial city of Granada:

Everywhere, new cobblestones were going in, and new streetlights. Fresh paint in vivid yellow, pink and blue shone on magnificently restored … 19th-century churches. Visitors – European tour groups, Latin American families, Australian backpackers – wandered about the central part of the town, soaking up the evanescent atmosphere of more than a hundred years of solitude.

Like every city in Nicaragua, Granada is in a spectacular location. A richly forested volcano overlooks the city, which is perched at the edge of Lake Nicaragua. At the foot of the city, an enchanting archipelago of tiny, close-set islands beckons.