A video from Las Penitas and Poneloya
Las penitas has long been a popular destination for locals and expats lucky enough to find this hidden gem located 12 miles or 18 km from the city of Leon on Nicaraguas west coast. 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 pacific coast but forget to explore the fantastic surfing further south.
Las Penitas is suitable for surfers of all levels of expertise, but the undertow can be fearsome so signing up for at least a few local surfing classes is recommended if your are a beginner. There is a surfing school located in a small thatched hut right on the beach between Playa Roca and Hostel Oasis. The school offers lessons, rent out equipment and body boars as well as having a skilled repair man that can fix any damages your board might have if you want him to.
The beach offers great waves all year around and is known to consistently offer great waves. The waves are point-break waves with a lenght of 50-150 meters. Swells starts working at 1.0-1.5 m and grows up to 3 m+. The bottom is sandy but in a few spots rocks are hidden below the surface during hide tide, so asking the locals or spending some time checking out the beach during low tide is recommended.
On the beach you will find several hotels and hostels that offer affordable accommodation. You can get a cheap private room from 20USD/night and dorm beds from 6 USD/night with even cheaper alternatives being developed. There also plenty of options if you want to find cheap food. 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 want to eat even cheaper, buy rice and beans and fried pirogues from the food stands people put up in front of their houses in the evening. The local shops offer a bag od breed for 15 cordobas (75 cents) and 2 dozen bananas for a buck. 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. During recent years, Nicaragua has passed several laws in order to encourage foreign tourism since the hospitaly sector offers a source of income to this impoverished nation where most middle aged people will have deep personal experiences of dictatorship, revolution and war.
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 is slow and make a lot of stops along the way but one benefit with the bus is that it has plenty of place for your surfing board (you might be asked to pay 10 cordobas / 50 cent extra to bring to board on the buss.