Near the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica lies a wonderful little surf town called San Juan del Sur. This happy little tourist town on the pacific coastline seems to have it all figured out. The food is good, the people friendly, and the streets are free from garbage. We even observed locals using garbage cans, which we had not previously seen in Nicaragua. We read in our Central America guide that just a short walk from Playa Maderas, the popular surf beach, t...

Granada is a beautiful colonial city on the edge of Lake Nicaragua. Café lined streets are closed for pedestrian traffic and large cathedrals tower above the city. Our guide book stated it well when it said that it was Nicaragua´s golden child. We pampered ourselves by getting massages from the ¨Seeing Eyes¨ organization, which was founded and is run by blind men who give incredible massages. And since we are a bit of adrenaline junkies we figured we needed t...

About 10km outside of Matagalpa, there is a coffee farm, or finca, called Finca Selva Negra. This plantation is completely organic and nearly fully sustainable. And well since that is right up our alley, we had to visit. Coffee is made by harvesting the red, ripe seeds off the coffee plant, removing the seed coat, fermenting the slimy beans in water to remove the jelly coat, placing the beans in the sun to dry for 5 days, shaking the dried beans to remove the las...