Nicaragua: Contra to what you think

In the mid-70s New Yorker Michael Kaye skritched his way to Central America to spend a season surfing. He landed in Costa Rica, which then had little infrastructure and less tourism. He recognized the potential, and started a little business that took clients hiking through the cloud forests, rafting the russet rivers, exploring the piping volcanoes. He built a series of small environmentally-friendly lodges in the jungles, and pioneered a style of travel that would come to be called ecotourism. Thirty years later Costa Rica is the ecotourism capital of the world, with a gadarene rush of some 1.4 million visitors last year, and with so many lodges and operations flying under the eco-banner that the defining qualities of wildness, diversity, fertility and isolation are creaking under the green-leaning crowds.

It comes as no surprise, then, that ‘the godfather of ecotourism,” as Michael has come to be known, has turned his attention to new contours to the north in recent months, to a place that might be compared to Costa Rica before the swarm, a once-troubled country finally bathed in peace, and blessed with natural Bianca beauty: Nicaragua.

So, when Michael invited photographer Sally Solaro and me to join on a reconnaissance of Nicaragua, we accepted with alacrity. We rendezvoused in Granada, the colonial capital on the shores of Lago de Nicaragua, only a hop from Costa Rica on a new air taxi, Nature Air. Michael looked so much different than when I knew him in the 70s…then he passed for a jaunty Che Guevera, with a long black unkempt beard, insurgent hair and leather sandals….he was, in a manner of speaking, a sandalnista.  Now Michael has transformed not only the travel industry, against its will I should add, but himself, sporting natty Ex Officio wear, his chin porcelain smooth, and his hair a short, neat George Clooneyesque crop specked with grey. “We all change. Tourism has changed. Countries change. Fourteen years ago Nicaragua was unthinkable as a travel destination. Now it’s the safest place in Central America, at the brink of a tourist revolution,” Michael beams in explanation.

The Nicaragua that capers in my mind is from chilling images from the late 70s, a country then of rapine and fire, bleeding in civil war. The conflict ended with the Sandinistas' 1979 overthrow of the Somoza family's corrupt, four-decades-long regime. Then came the dozen years of postwar fighting as the American-backed contra rebels -- with the assist of a U.S. embargo -- tried to push the Sandinista Front of National Liberation out of power.

Sally Solaro A colorful crab cowers amongst the vines of the jungle floor.

The embargo was lifted after the Sandinistas lost the 1990 presidential election. Foreign investment dipped toes in, some adventurers poked about, including Michael. Quietly the country has returned to a state of grace. Visitor numbers has increased 170% since 1993, from 200,000 to 525,000 last year; tourism dollars increased some 400% in the same time frame, from $30 million to $150 million. And Michael thinks the tourism volcano is just beginning its tremblers.

We begin our own discovery with a kayak tour of Lago de Nicaragua, a lake too vast to see across, second largest lake in all the tropics, where 20 years ago guerillas skulked among the broad-leafed trees of the 365 volcanic islands. Now the islands are garlanded with Century 21 signs offering pieces of paradise to snowbirds. The one occupied tree we encounter is festooned with a leggy spider monkey sporting a Daniel Ortega-like moustache. He would look better without the facial hair, Michael suggests.

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