Surfing in Nicaragua – Las Penitas
Located 12 miles or 20 km from the colonial city of Leon on the Nicaraguan west coast, Las Penitas has long been a favoured hang-out for locals and a few expats who stumbled upon it by chance. The small village is very much a white spot on the map for the surfing community despite the fact that it offers world class surfing on empty beaches that are nothing like the crowded beaches that the community flock to along the U.S. and Mexican west coast but fail to explore what Central America has to offer.
Las penitas can be recommend for beginner and anvanced surfers a like but the beach do have a strong undertow and a few lessons from local surfers are recommended if you are a novice surfer. There is a surfing school located in a small thatched hut right on the beach between Playa Roca and Hostel Oasis. In addition to offering classes the school rents out surfing boards and body boards, and can also repair a damaged board for you.
The beach of Las Penitas is surfed year round and known for its consistency when it comes to offering great waves. The type is point-break and the normal length varies from 50 to 150 meters. Swells starts working at 1.0-1.5 m and grows up to 3 m+. It is a sand beach with a few hidden rocks below the surface and a few large rock formations going out into the water and it can therefore be a good idea to ask a local about the locations of the rocks or to visit the beach during low tide before starting to surf.
Las Penitas offers a wide variety of affordavle accomondations and is home to a number of Hotels, Hotels and B&Bs. You can get a cheap private room from 20USD/night and dorm beds from 6 USD/night with even cheaper alternatives being developed. Most hotels and hostels also serve relatively cheap food, such as catch of the day, fried meat with jalapeno sauce, and hamburgers. Near the entrance of Las Penitas is the Bertha restaurant that offers a gigantic sea food platter enough to satisfy 2-3 persons for 250 cordobas, which is less than 13 USD. If you budget is very low you can eat from stands outside peoples houses at night for less than 1 USD. In the local shops you can purchase a bag of bread for less than a dollar and a one-foot granadilla fruit for not much more. Want a cocoa nut? You can simple pick cocnuts on the beach due to the fact that the owners of the beach house dont harvest their coconuts and simply allow the nuts to fall on the beach.
You can get to managua on one of countless flights each day and getting here is easy as it is a mere 2 hours flight from Miami. Once in Managua airport, you will get your passport stamped by friendly inspectors who see it as their job to welcome foreign visitors to the country. Nicaragua are very eager to promote tourism and want everyone to have a good stay as tourism is a very important source of income for this poor country..
It is easy to get from Managua to Las Penitas by taking a bus that cost 40 cordoba (2 USD) from UCA in Managua to Leon and than a chicken bus to Las Penitas. If you for some reason are in a hurry, you pay a cab driver 150-200 cordobas (7.50-10 USD) to take you from Leon to Las Penitas in 15 minutes, but some taxis might be too small to accommodate a surfing board. The bus has plenty of room for boards but is a typical chicken bus that makes frequent stops along the way so expect the 20 km journey to take up to an hour
