San Juan del Sur: Nicaraguan Surfer’s Paradise on the Pacific Coast 

I am eating Mexican food in a Scottish restaurant on a Nicaraguan beach as the sun sets behind Christ the Redeemer. There is a motorcycle festival on the street, and a reggae band on the boardwalk. San Juan del Sur is quirky, and rowdy and totally in a world of its own. For anyone who’s convinced travel died when TikTok was born, ‘SJDS’ feels like a final outpost of chalkboard coffee shops, red cup party culture, and relaxed surf town energy. As a Gen Z traveller, I often worry that I missed the better days of backpacking trails, but SJDS cured that FOMO pretty quickly. Strolling past seashell jewelry market stalls and bikini boutiques, this Nicaraguan-Pacific backpacking hub seems permanently stuck in a digi-cam selfie, or a 2016 Retrica filter. San Juan del Sur lies in the southwest of Nicaragua, around a two-hour drive from Managua and an hour from Granada. The town has always been a hotspot for domestic tourism, and Nicaraguan hen dos and girls’ trips often fill its beachside bars and restaurants. It’s the kind of laid-back location where backpacker and local culture blend easily, and everyone is in the same nightclub by 11 pm. If you’d rather stick to calmer evenings, San Juan...