San Juan del Sur
The one town on this coast with a night to it, and two sand beaches to learn on.
Welcome to Popoyo
Surfing in Popoyo
Popoyo is a reef on the Tola coast, and no wave in Morocco, Portugal or Costa Rica comes near its numbers. In July, twenty-seven days out of thirty come clean and rideable, two are blown out and one is too small. Nowhere else here comes close, and the reason is not the swell.
- 2spots
The reason is the wind. Lake Nicaragua sits inland of this coast, and the trade winds crossing it arrive offshore here almost every morning of the year. Southern Hemisphere swell supplies the waves from May to October; the lake supplies the grooming. A week in this village is the rare one where you plan around what you want to surf rather than around a forecast.
Two spots carry the village. Popoyo itself is the reef, working at every stage of the tide on a southwest swell, and busy the moment it is up. Playa Colorado, fifteen minutes south, is a river break over sand that is rarely crowded, and the reason for that is worth knowing before you book: the beach is private, and access runs through the development behind it.
Water is 28 to 29°C through the season, which is boardshorts and nothing else. What Popoyo does not have is a town. This is a scattering of camps along a dirt road, meals where you sleep, and dark by seven. Somebody who wants a bar at the end of the day should look at San Juan del Sur, an hour and a half south.
Welcome home.
Why Popoyo?
Wind, not swell
Most surf destinations are decided by how often a swell arrives. Nicaragua is decided by how often the wind behaves, and here it behaves nearly every morning because a lake upwind of the coast keeps blowing offshore. That is why a country nobody puts first runs cleaner water than Morocco, Portugal or Costa Rica, and why the season question here is only about swell.
Where is Popoyo?
Getting there
Popoyo is two and a half hours from Managua airport, most of it on a road that turns to dirt for the last stretch. Camps here run their own transfers because there is no other sensible way in, and once you are there the two breaks are a few minutes apart.
Best surf spots in Popoyo
See all spotsSurf camps in Popoyo
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