Camping on Maderas Beach, Nicaragua

After the craziness of Semana Santa left the streets of San Juan del Sur, the town was in a bit of a hangover state. The streets and  beach were litered with trash, buildings were in disarray and we were all finally surrounded by silence rather than constant loud music playing till the wee hours of the morning. JB and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to just get away and do something fun that we’d been wanting to do since we moved here–camp on the beach. We wanted to get the heck out of town, so we decided to go one of our favorite small beaches just outside of San Juan del Sur: Maderas Beach.

We grabbed a shuttle at Casa Oro for a couple bucks each to take us directly to the beach front. 10 mins later down a very bumpy dirt road, we got out of the shuttle and headed straight down to the beach.

Just to the right of us was an awesome little cafe called La Revolución–owned by a young guy from San Francisco–that had tents for rent to camp in as well as small apartment cabanas. We were in the rustic camping mood, so we rented a tent for a few dollars.

The entire area around us was alive and young. In front of us was a little taco bar with tourists sipping on cold Toñas under the sun. To the left was another restaurant that served up the local Nicaraguan cuisine of gallo pinto and meats. Attached to that restaurant was a rather large hostel right on the sand, which we thought about staying at but decided to save our money for a nice dinner that night.

Behind both of those buildings were more camp grounds. The cafe was filled with young tourists as well using their computers on the cafe’s wifi while sipping on coffee. They had a stone wood-burning stove to cook handmade pizza, which we both were very excited about trying later that night.

After we put our stuff away in the locked up closet, we decided to get some work done in this awesome atmosphere. My favorite part about working from anywhere is that epic spots like this can be turned into your office which makes work honestly not feel like work. We set up our work station on the table that overlooked the beautiful Maderas beach with our computers along with our tools to make our LOOTB bracelet leather tags.

We caught up on emails, worked on articles and then started on the hammering. Jon and I actually hand make the leather pieces on our bracelets by hammering each letter and number with an individual nail into the leather. It takes a lot of time, but it’s one of our favorite parts about our products because that number allows people to look up their child and see the impact. Plus, you know that each bracelet is created with a lot of heart and hard work by us two and our artisans–not just something made in a factory in China. It is being handmade right here on the beach!

After we got a significant amount of work done, we decided to go explore around the other neighboring beaches that we would call home for the next couple of days. Our favorite little beach was just down to the right of Maderas, so as the tide went back, we walked across the black volcanic rocks down about 15 mins to find it.

We were only going to go check it out for a romantic moment to enjoy the quiet and then come back, but when we got there we were blown away by the beauty we found. We ended up exploring all new territory that would lead us on the most epic hike we’d ever experienced.