The view of the volcano Concepción on the way to Ometepe Island.

Nicaragua is rated as a danger level of three out of four by the US Travel Advisory. To give you perspective, Afganistán is a four. Why is this small Central American country so scary? Is it because of extreme gun violence, lack of health insurance for most of the country, the concentration camps at its borders, it’s corrupt government that lets the top get away with everything, or the radical divide in political beliefs across the country?? Oh wait, sorry, that’s the United States.. Nicaragua is far from perfect, there is a corrupt government, some serious government unrest, and many things were set on fire at one point in time. However, the high warnings seem to aline mostly with when the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act was set in place by Trump, which ironically is concerned about corrupt elections. It should be noted that the European travel warnings have it set at a two, like the rest of Central America.

So, now that I have convinced you that I’m not a crazy person traveling off to terrifying places that I will quickly be murdered in, let me tell you about why you should go to Nicaragua.

Nicaragua is a beautiful and diverse country in Central America, mostly known for its volcanoes, of which there are 19 active ones. There is a rich rebellious history and lovely beaches, best for surfers. My trip was focused on the volcanos, so we will talk about that.

My group landed in Managua. Like most large cities in Central America that one flies into, I recommend not spending too much time there. If there is unrest happening, it is probably happening there. We immediately traveled to Granada, via a private van our hostel offered — expensive but easy. If you have ever been to a Latin American country, you will quickly recognize Granada as the typical cute tourist town. It is colorful and has a Spanish influence to its architecture. However, it is clear that the US’s travel advisory has done some damage, because the tourism seems down. That being said, it was crazy easy to book tours out of our hostel and off the street (although our guy on the street did seem a little more sketchy). In addition to easily being able to book tours, vegan food is at your fingertips! We stayed in Selina, which is very cute hostel, but had lack luster food and no working hot water, while we were there. I was able to get vegan tacos there, but they were far from filling. There is a local market, and to be fair we went on Christmas, but it was also underwhelming. What we did quickly fall in love with, however, was the Garden Café!

Breakfast for vegan champions at The Garden Cafe.

The Garden Café was perfect for all the meals! They have amazing smoothies, a papaya smoothie cereal, and a yummy avocado toast for breakfast. I’m seriously getting hungry right now thinking of my breakfasts there. For lunch and dinner, they offered a few different vegan sandwiches and dishes. Even my raw vegan husband was happy to find options here. All the food was on point.

One of the evenings, my friends and I dined on the strip. This is an area with a lot of restaurants, which pour out into the streets. The food options here seem to be more authentic. While good, the Garden Cafe feels pretty Californian. At one of these restaurants, I easily was able to order a vegan burrito. Unlike some countries I have been to, everyone here seemed to understand what vegan is and were happy to work with it. In addition to this, I found getting by on limited Spanish okay in Nicaragua. I would argue it is easier in Nicaragua than in the Galapagos (read about traveling vegan in the Galapagos here), which I found to be more touristy.

Tam and I on the strip trying to decide where to dine. Photo by Vitaley Zaretskey.

After my crew saw the amazing views around Granada, namely the famous lava lake at the Masaya Volcano (live lava and a must see!), and boated through the Islets of Granada -- to see the islands and monkeys (all good trips need to have bonding time with animals, especially monkeys), we headed to Ometepe, an island with two volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.

On the topic of safety, Ometepe doesn’t seem to have any police on the island. It is mostly farmland and very close knit communities. There has been almost no crime on the island and the Nicaraguan government mostly leaves it in peace. While there seems to be less tourism in Nicaragua than other places I have been to in Central America, the places that are offering it know how to do it for vegans. Oh, and I must say, why does the rest of the world get being eco and reusable energy so much more than the US??

Me bonding with monkeys. Photo by Tam Nguyen.

So, we stayed at El Zopilote, which is an eco vegan/vegetarian barebones hostel. This is one of those types of places that you will either love or hate. If you are looking for luxury and comfort, you probably want to look elsewhere. To give you any idea, when the lady was showing us to our cabin, I asked about hot water and she just laughed at me.

El Zopilote is clearly for the rustic backpacker on a budget who is looking for a very eco experience, which I highly respect. El Zopilote has a large garden and a farm where they grow and make all their own food. There are dorms that are open air (aka they are hammocks clustered together basically outside with some mosquito netting thrown over them). We were staying in one of the more fancy cabins. It had three rooms and a “kitchen” (a sink and a countertop). Even though it was private, they still suggested you lock up all your belongings every time you left. This made me a bit nervous. However, the space was actually very cute for what it was.

El Zopilote vegan/vegetarian restaurant.

Then there was the bathroom! It had a compost toilet! This took some getting used to, but honestly, it is much better for the environment and requires less energy/water than the flushing ones. And let me tell you about the shower: It was also open air, which I have to say is kinda magical when the environment is a jungle. The lady was not lying about the cold water though, but I found it a lot easier to accept than at Selina, which was too cute to have cold water, if that makes sense. Here it felt right, and I really looked forward to my wild showers.

The food at El Zopilote was good, all handmade and natural. I have no idea where they got the greens for the salads, but I’m pretty sure they were leaves straight off the trees, which certainly was new for me, but still very yummy! They have a range of dishes there. The owner is Italian so there certainly was that influence, including a brick oven pizza night once a week, which we were lucky enough to enjoy. However, if you are looking for authentic Nicaraguan food, this is not the place. In fact, I felt a little limited on authentic options on the island. The way the island is set up, there is a port town where the ferry drops you off, which is very active, but this is about an hour and a half away from all the cool stuff the island offers, namely the “easier” volcano we wanted to hike. More on that later. Ergo, if you want to be where the action is, there isn’t that much human action, which means limited options for food. Luckily for me, El Zopilote has a ton of vegan options and we were also very close to another vegan hostel, El Pital (which we featured here). El Pital is actually a small scale raw vegan chocolate factory. This place has some of the prettiest smoothies you will ever see! El Pital is like the less eco high end version of El Zopilote. I can see the average traveler being a little more comfortable here, but the price point also goes along with this, and they have flushing toilets (for better or worse). While El Pital is absolutely beautiful, vegan, and has great chocolate and smoothies, I personally found their food rather limited. They tended to focus on one dish a day, so I hope you like what they have to offer. Otherwise, you are having smoothies for dinner.

Like I said before, Ometepe is a lovely island with two volcanoes, Volcán Concepción and Volcán Maderas. We were under the impression that Maderas is the easier of the two to hike, but after our hike our guide suggested that maybe Concepción is a little easier. It is kinda pick your poison. Concepción is straight up with almost zero covering from the sun for hours, Maderas is in the jungle and at the top of it is a cloud forest, but you are hiking in very wet thick mud for hours. My husband and I are very proud that we won the award for being the two slowest people to climb the volcano without turning back. It only took us 15 hours, the last few in the dark with our darkly clothed guide repeatedly disappearing on us, and I still have bruises on my toes a month and a half later... I thought pole dancing was rough. Honestly, it is a pretty terrible hike, but about ten years ago my dad did it; ergo, there was no way I wasn’t going to complete it!

Overall, Nicaragua is a lovely safe country with friendly locals. You can get by pretty well on limited Spanish and being vegan is pretty easy and tasty. Now go out there and hike some volcanoes!!

The view of Ometepe from our volcano hike.

Article and images (unless otherwise noted) by Kira Bucca, Editor in Chief of Jejune Magazine.

Traveling Vegan - Nicaragua