Nicaragua, in less than two decades, has undergone an extreme makeover of reality TV proportions.
The old images of men dressed in green fatigues and dark sunglasses, tanks in the streets and scruffy guerrillas toting AK47s in the jungles, have been replaced by the sunnier, tourist friendly sights of white-sand beaches, colorful toucans, pluming volcanoes and a vibrant, inviting culture.
The transformation has been so dramatic that Nicaragua probably wouldn’t be recognized at her 20 year high school reunion.
“Wow, who’s that standing next to Costa Rica?
“That’s Nicaragua.”
“Really? She looks a lot better than I remember her from the ‘80s. Should I approach her?”
“Yeah, but hurry. The line’s forming.”
Nicaragua’s makeover is much more profound than a simple change of wardrobe. After two decades of a revolution and devastating counterrevolutionary war, Nicaraguans lay down their weapons at the end of the 1980s and opted for a complete lifestyle change.
Since then, the country has thrice ratified democracy and now touts the proud distinction of being the “safest country in Central America.”
The new Nicaragua is a land of opportunity and near-perfect weather; a country starting fresh with the determination to do things differently from its dark past. Though traditional political divisions and shenanigans are an ingrained part of everyday life, politicos of every persuasion and party color are in general agreement that the mainsail of Nicaragua’s ship of state must be filled by the winds of tourism and foreign investment to sail into the future.
Attractive foreign residency laws and tax incentives make Nicaragua one of the most alluring countries in Central America. Direct foreign investment in this country, known fondly as the “belly button of the Americas,” has jumped from nearly zero to $260 million in less than two decades. And the number is still climbing.
Central America is the new hotspot for U.S. expatriates and retirees, and Nicaragua is quickly assuming its position on the top of that list. While Costa Rica fiddles with new legislation to make it more difficult for lower-income to middle-class foreigners to become residents there, Nicaragua is opening its doors wider to foreigners of all income levels to invest and retire here.
For example, Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly is debating a bill that could quintuple the minimum-income requirement for foreign retirees, from $600 to $3000 a month. Nicaragua, meanwhile, last year passed a new Tourism Law that sets the minimum monthly income at $400 for people over 45. The new law also set in motion the recently inaugurated multilingual Public Attention Office in Managua – a one-stop shop to streamline the foreign residency application process.
To sweeten the deal further, Nicaragua is considering implementing a sliding-scale incentive program that would offer greater tax exonerations to wealthier residency applicants, without shutting the door on lower-income hopefuls.
Tourism here has also grown by leaps and bounds during the last fifteen years, averaging an annual double-digit growth rate since 1990. The government has identified the tourism sector as a priority for national development – one of the few things the often-bickering tribal parties can agree on.
Former Sandinista hardliners have become hoteliers. And even Comandante Tómas Borge, the former revolutionary government’s hawkish Minister of the Interior and right-hand man to FSLN party boss Daniel Ortega, has become a leading industry booster as the head of the congressional tourism commission.
Spearheaded by the competent leadership of the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR), Nicaragua’s increasingly coordinated efforts to attracted tourism and foreign investment are bearing ripe fruits in this country known “as the land of lakes and volcanoes.”
In 2003, Nicaragua attracted more than 520,000 foreign visitors and generated $150 million in revenue, making the tourism sector – for the first time in history – the country’s number one cash cow. Tourism continued to set new records last year, drawing more than 600,000 foreign visitors who left behind 170 million tourism-generated dollars.
The encouraging statistics prompted INTUR minister Lucía Salazar to predict, with confident brio, that Nicaragua would surpass Costa Rica’s tourism numbers (currently the highest in Central America) by 2010.
Tourism infrastructure continues to blossom up and down the Pacific coast, from the northern- Pacific’s Puesta del Sol, a fivestar marina/resort in Chinandega, to new beach hotels in the increasing-popular southern-Pacific beach town of San Juan del Sur. Plans to construct a new 156-kilometer Pacific coastal highway will further link tourism destinations in the north and south, and propel coastal real-estate values through the roof.
Eco-adventure tourism has also taken root in Nicaragua, which now offers everything from “sandbording” down the black sands of Cerro Negro Volcano in León, to zipline canopy tours on Mombacho Volcano in Granada. Tourists who like to take it slower can explore the scenic ridges of Catarina on horseback, paddle around Granada’s Isletas in a kayak, or go bird watching on the nature trails of Matagalpa’s Finca Esperanza Verde, which last year was honored by Smithsonian Magazine as the best ecolodge conservation project in the world.
The colonial hub of Granada, the oldest standing colonial city in the Americas, continues to be Nicaragua’s tourism mecca, attracting more foreign visitors and expat residents than any other spot in the country. The number of foreigners living in Granada has jumped from several dozen five years ago, to nearly 1,000 in 2005. New lodging options, bars and restaurants continue to pop up throughout the city to absorb the influx of annual visitors and retirees. A new tourism police unit – the country’s first – was announced in the beginning of 2005 with the goal of making Granada the “safest city in Nicaragua and Central America,” according to newly elected mayor Alvaro Chamorro.
Although Granada’s enormous popularity has had a skyrocketing effect on the city’s real-estate market – in some cases doubling or tripling prices in five years – buyers are still coming, as evident by the real-estate offices on every corner. A refinished colonial home near the center of town can run upwards of $160,000, but some good deals on fixer-uppers in the $50,000-range can still be found on the outskirts of town.
Other buyers, meanwhile, are looking to purchase less expensive properties on the shores of the nearby Laguna de Apoyo – an extinct volcanic-crater lake, the deepest in Central America – or on the more-climate Mombacho Volcano. Real estate agents believe those locations, just 20 minutes from Granada, will soon become the next real-estate hotspots.
The popular beach town San Juan del Sur continues to grow with hotels and restaurants, as property is purchased all along the southern Pacific coast. And the capital city of Managua, with its modern malls and shopping centers, offers most of the creature comforts and consumer goods that many urbanite expats have grown accustomed to.
Road infrastructure is also improving at the record rate of 16.7-kilometers of newly paved road per month. The much anticipated four-lane highway connecting Managua to Granada is ambitiously scheduled for completion in November 2005, and should slash driving time to the capital by 25%.
Nicaragua is still an extremely impoverished country, the second poorest in the hemisphere behind Haiti. Government statistics show that Nicaragua is still trapped in poverty levels of the 1950s.
But the forecast here is optimistic. As President Enrique Bolaños, in his January 2005 state of the nation address repeated as mantra: “Nicaragua is better off today than it has been at anytime in the last 25 years.”And perhaps ever.
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