San Juan Del Sur/ Playa Maderas

After a pretty hectic week we are off to San Juan Del Sur for a bit of R and R. San Juan is probably one of the most touristy areas of Nicaragua, popular for its surfing, partying and beachside living.

Too old to party now we decide to follow our friends Vish and Kitty to Playa Maderas, a nice beach area 10km north of SJDS. The beach at SJDS is not very nice and so most people take shuttles from town to the nicer beaches nearby. No supermarket there so we load up on food and head off.

There's not much in Playa Maderas, just beach, a few accomodation places and 2 restaurants. Perfect. We find a beautifully relaxed hostel set in the bushland, complete with outdoor kitchen, individual huts, howler monkeys in the trees and of course hammocks. It feels great.

After settling in we set off to check out the beach and its.. not what we expected! Much smaller than we imagined (at this point we realised how spoilt we are with our Australian beaches) but most notably there are 2 buildings on the beach, one is a hostel and the other is "Taco Loco", one of the restaurants in the area. Taco Loco is blaring doof doof dance music and the deck area is full of.. well, bogans. Hmm.. interesting! We wander over to the next bay and run into Vish and Kitty and have a good laugh about it.

As we walk back to our hostel at dusk up the dirt road, the few accomodation places and private houses have lit up laterns and fairy lights. So pretty. We are definitely happy to stay here for a few days.Read more