San Juan is a beach resort on Nicaragua’s pacific coast. Like most resorts that border this sea it is popular with surfers. We have yet to acquire this skill but were drawing in by the prospect of cheap alcohol in Nicaragua’s most popular party town.
The beach is pretty enough and the town is nice, but by far the best thing about our stay was the amazing hostel we stayed in called Buenas Onda. Unlike other hostels which seem to be half-heartedly decorated this place has clearly had time and money spent on it feeling more like a hotel than a hostel. The views from the balcony were phenomenal.
We ended up staying 5 nights here because we loved this place so much. With a fridge full of beer at $1 each we couldn’t pass the opportunity to watch another sunset from this place.
The beach in San Juan does not actually have the best waves. Surfers are shipped from the town to other nearby beaches. This was not a problem for us as we had hours of fun playing in the small waves testing out our photography skills.
What cannot go unnoticed when backpacking around Nicaragua is the number of travellers wearing Sunday Funday Tshirts. This is a pool crawl around various different hostels organised every Sunday in San Juan. We had heard both great and terrible reviews about this event. Our plan was to attend but after partying a bit too much on Friday and Saturday we decided to give it a miss. Maybe we are just getting too old!
Every day we said we would do the hike to the huge Jesus monument which stands proudly at the top of the hill at the end of the beach. Apparently this is the second largest in the world only being beaten by Christ the Redeemer in Rio. After 4 days of choosing beer and sunbathing instead of hiking we finally did make it to the top on our last day.
The Jesus statue was mediocre, but the views at the top were well worth the short but steep hike to the top.
After running up a ridiculously large beer tab we decided it was finally time to leave. We may not have done a lot with our time in San Juan but we certainly enjoyed ourselves.
