by Marie Mendel

The panorama of the south Nicaraguan coast was our backdrop - thick green vegetation on steep hills overlooking unspoiled beaches. We had pulled out of the port of San Juan del Sur earlier in the day and were heading south towards Costa Rica, the volcanoes peeking over the horizon on our left.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Ballyhoo baitfish jumping, signaling action just below the ocean surface. Again, the silver fish shot out of the cool blue water, this time with the dorsal fin of a sailfish breaking the surface behind him. The sailfish played with his prey. “The sail is a sleeper,” I thought, suspended on the surface, hanging out and making short runs at other fish for fun. Richard, my partner, kicked the gear into neutral and killed the engine of the 32-foot sports fishing boat.

by Zack Black

Until recently there were two common ways to travel to Nicararagua - by road or air. Now there is a third option, by water. Marina Puesta del Sol opened its’ docks to the international yachting community in July in the Aserradores Estuary on the Pacific coast just west of Chinandega. There is a luxury hotel with 19 rooms, a fine restaurant and complete marina facilities available, now that the first phase is complete. The complex sits on the inland side of a peninsula, the tip of which is ocean front. A pool and rancho have been built on the beach with additional hotel rooms, condos and a golf course planned.

Roberto Membreño, an avid “cruiser” and partner in a California engineering firm, first conceived the idea three years ago. “It’s a natural place for a marina to be built - I saw it from the perspective of a sailor, not a business man, a full-service yacht facility with in-water repairs, laundry, electricity, cable and internet. We can do repairs in water, but we don’t have facilities to take boats out of the water.”

by D. Arróglia

Genesis of English in Nicaragua

Perhaps the first people to utter Anglo-Saxon words in Nicaragua were the dreaded British corsairs who set foot on our Caribbean Coast in the XVII century as they waged an undermining war against the Spanish. These pirates pillaged Spanish villages up and down the Coco River, as well as the main towns of León, Granada, and El Realejo. Famous buccaneers such as William Dampier, John Davis (from Jamaica), and the famous Henry Morgan wreaked havoc along the isthmus. Morgan was a rookie pirate at the age of 30 when, along with the infamous buccaneer John Morris, he attacked Granada in June 1665. It would not be the only time. In their attacks, they used the fierce Mayangna and Zambo or Miskito warriors, who included some English words into their vocabulary. However, the first historical landfall and contact with the Nicaraguan Caribbean indigenous population by subjects of the British Crown occurred in Cabo Gracias a Dios, in northeastern Nicaragua in 1633. The British Capitan Sussex Camock laid anchor in the Miskito Cays to barter with the natives.

by Luis Morales Alonso

The pre-Colombian heritage, with the best artistic testimonies evidenced by polychromatic pottery and stone statues, is our main artistic inheritance from the old days dating back to 200BC. During the Colonization, religious paintings and images occupied a privileged place, but there are few convincing examples from that period that we can enumerate; although the main evidence is the urban layout of our colonial towns and some buildings with colonial architecture that have survived during those 500 years.

In fact, our artistic styles were influenced by the development of the arts in Central Europe during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Romantic paintings, portraits, still lifes, flowers and landscapes were developed by Nicaraguan painters from León, the Capital, and Granada, the second most important city and main commercial port of the country until the nineteenth century.

by Nick Cooke 

Unpack your bags:

It looks like efforts by the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR) and this humble publication are paying off. INTUR recently reported a rise in the number of visitors. There were 19% more people coming to Nicaragua during the first half of 2004 compared to the same period in 2003. Spending by travelers over the same period rose by 8.7%. Of the 350,339 people entering the country the first half of this year, 289,000 spent at least one night, while 61,260 only spent a few hours in transit. Average per-person spending was $75, for a total of $79.6 million, $6.4 million more than the first semester of last year. Tourism is climbing rapidly up the list of foreign exchange earners for the country and investment projects are springing up all over the place. Maybe it’s time to dust off the plans for that bed & and breakfast operation you’ve dreamed of? INTUR and local governments are even involved in an anti-litter campaign to improve the local image. (more…)