Nicaragua discovery guide

Nicaragua has the volcano chain, the colonial towns and the lake-and-island geography of its neighbours at a fraction of their visitor numbers: one million tourists in the record year of 2010, spread across a country larger than any other on the isthmus. There is Granada on its lake, León under its volcanoes, and Ometepe's two cones rising out of 8,264 square kilometres of fresh water. Masaya's venting crater is a short drive from the capital and Cerro Negro's black slopes an hour from León. All of it sits in the Pacific lowlands, within a few hours' drive.

The main travel issue

Political: a government in open conflict with the Church and its critics since 2018, a legal ban on any political activity by foreigners, a drone ban, and British and Canadian government advisories that say to exercise a high degree of caution.

The solution

Go in the dry season, keep to the Pacific circuit and the Corn Islands, use radio-dispatched taxis, and leave the flag and the opinions at home.

January–February -- the heart of the dry season: clear views of the volcano chain, Ometepe's trails dry, Granada and León at their busiest and most pleasant. Book ahead for the Corn Islands.

March–April -- hot and dusty in the Pacific lowlands before the rains; Holy Week fills San Juan del Sur and the lake beaches with Nicaraguan families. The 19th of April is the anniversary of the 2018 protests, and a day to keep off the streets.

May–June -- the rains begin and the hurricane season with them, from mid-May on the Pacific side by the Canadian advisory and from June by the British one; the landscape turns green and the crowds go.

July–August -- wet afternoons, dry mornings; the Caribbean coast and the Corn Islands are wetter than the Pacific. 19 July is the anniversary of the revolution and a political holiday, with the caution that implies.

September–October -- the wettest months and the peak of the hurricane risk on both coasts; the volcanoes are often in cloud. The cheapest time, and the one to avoid for the Caribbean.

November–December -- the rains end in late November on both coasts and the dry season opens; La Purísima and Christmas fill the towns with processions and fireworks, and the volcanoes come back into view.

• Pacific Lowlands

If you travel slowly

Take the boat from San Jorge to Ometepe and stay. The island is 276 square kilometres of two volcanoes -- Concepción, which last erupted in 2010, and Maderas, with a crater lake and rainforest -- joined by an isthmus, with ferries several times a day back to the mainland and no reason to hurry for one. The Corn Islands, 70 kilometres off the Caribbean coast and two La Costeña flights a day from Managua or Bluefields, are the slow alternative at sea.

If you want to see the essentials

Granada's colonial streets under Mombacho; León's cathedral, the largest in Central America and a World Heritage Site, with Rubén Darío buried inside, and León Viejo, the town abandoned after Momotombo's eruption of 1610 and inscribed in 2000; Masaya, the first national park, where its active crater emits sulphur dioxide without pause; and a day on the lake.

If you seek local character

The rivalry between Liberal León and Conservative Granada shaped the republic's first decades and still colours the two towns. The Caribbean coast is a different country, English- and Miskito-speaking, nine per cent of the population and most of its Black Nicaraguans; Bluefields and the autonomous regions are where to hear it.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

Cerro Negro, which appeared in April 1850 and last erupted in 1999, is climbed for its black cinder slopes; San Juan del Sur is the surf town where Nicaraguan families holiday beside foreigners; and the Bosawás reserve in the north-east, about 20,000 square kilometres and 15 per cent of the country, holds the second-largest rainforest in the Western Hemisphere after the Amazon, reached with difficulty and a guide.

Nicaragua is Spanish-speaking and Pacific-facing in the part visitors see, and Caribbean and multilingual in the part they rarely reach. The Pacific towns carry the country's colonial and political history -- Granada, named in 1524, and León, seat of the university founded in 1812, the second-oldest in Central America, and of the poet Rubén Darío -- and their old rivalry, Conservative against Liberal, degenerated into civil war in the 1840s and 1850s and invited in the American filibuster William Walker, who declared himself president in 1856 and made English the official language before he was thrown out.

The twentieth century left deeper marks: the Somoza dynasty from 1936 to 1979; the Managua earthquake of December 1972 that killed over 10,000 and whose ruins are still visible in the capital's missing centre; the revolution that overthrew Somoza in 1979 and the Contra war of 1981 to 1990 that killed tens of thousands more; the election of 1990 that ended it. Since 2006 the country has been governed again by Daniel Ortega, and the protests of April 2018 and their repression are the wound of the present.

Religion is shifting under all of this: the Catholic Church is in open conflict with the government, and evangelical Protestant churches have grown rapidly since the 1990s. On the Caribbean coast the culture is Creole and Miskito, English-speaking, and self-governing on paper through two autonomous regions.

The first responsibility in Nicaragua is to its people's safety rather than its landscape. Foreigners are forbidden by law from any political activity; a visitor who joins a demonstration, posts dissent on social media or even displays the blue and white of the national flag in a political context can be detained or deported, and the Nicaraguans who were seen with them face worse. Ask questions privately, listen more than you speak, and do not photograph the police, the army or protests. Drones are banned outright.

The volcanoes and the lake are the environmental inheritance. Masaya has been a national park since 1979 and its active crater emits sulphur dioxide continuously; stay on the rim road and heed closures. Ometepe's Concepción erupted in 2010 and the islanders mostly ignored the evacuation order, which is a local habit, not advice. Lake Nicaragua carries its own sharks, sawfish and tarpon, and the towns on its shore drink from it.

Tourism became the country's second-largest industry on very little infrastructure; a million visitors a year is a lot for a country with the region's lowest income. Stay in locally owned places, hire local guides on Ometepe and at Cerro Negro, and pay in the local currency where you can -- the córdoba, not the dollar, is what stays in the town.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Year-round relative cost index vs country average

Higher — San Juan del Sur and the Pacific surf coast, the Corn Islands, Granada's best hotels

Average — Granada, León, Ometepe, Managua

Lower — the highland towns, the Caribbean mainland, everywhere in the wet season

The arrival tax is the British advisory's figure; no operator price list answered, and the relative bands are editorial judgment.