Popoyo
The reef the whole country is known for, and twenty-seven clean days out of thirty in July.
Welcome to San Juan del Sur
Surfing in San Juan del Sur
San Juan del Sur is the answer for anybody who wants the Nicaraguan wind without the dirt road. A working harbour town in a horseshoe bay, with the surf on beaches either side of it and the evenings in the middle.
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The wind is the same one that makes Popoyo: the trades cross Lake Nicaragua and land offshore here too, which is why July gives twenty-seven clean days out of thirty on these beaches as well. The swell runs May to October from the Southern Hemisphere, and the water sits at 28 to 29°C the whole way through.
Two beaches carry the week. San Juan del Sur itself is the town beach, sand, lefts and rights, and gentle enough for a first board. Playa Hermosa, twenty minutes south over a hill, is the longer and emptier one and the place a school moves to when the town beach is busy. Both name rips, which on an exposed sand coast is the ordinary thing to ask an instructor about rather than a reason to stay out.
What the town adds is the twenty-two hours a day nobody surfs. Places to eat that are not your camp, a beach you can walk at night, and enough traffic through it that arriving alone is not a quiet week. It is the trade against Popoyo, and for a first trip it is usually the right one.
Welcome home.
Why San Juan del Sur?
The same wind, with a town under it
Nicaragua's advantage is one thing, and it does not stop at Popoyo. The lake blows offshore over this whole stretch, so the choice between the two villages is not about wave quality: it is about whether you want a dirt road and camps that feed you, or a town that carries on after dark. Beginners are better served here; anybody chasing the reef is better served up north.
Where is San Juan del Sur?
Getting there
San Juan del Sur is two hours from Managua on tarmac the whole way, and forty minutes from the Costa Rican border at Peñas Blancas, which makes it the easy half of a two-country trip. The town beach is in the town; Playa Hermosa is a twenty-minute drive.
Best surf spots in San Juan del Sur
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