After spending the first half of our trip exploring ancient Nicaraguan cities, jungles and volcanoes, we spent the last half of our trip sitting alone on the most beautiful beach we have ever seen (more on that later). If you want to get off the grid, boy have we got the perfect spot for you! To reach our private getaway, you have to drive about 15 miles south of the nearest town, on a rough dirt road through the rain forest lining the Pacific coast. And that town is El Gigante, a sleepy fishing village of less than 300 people, which is itself completely isolated.
If we ever go missing and our home looks deserted, the first place you should look for us is El Gigante. The most laid back people you've ever met live here, and they eat fresh-caught seafood and play in the waves on an amazing beach in a gorgeous half-moon bay.
There are more boats than buildings, and you can count the number of cars/trucks on two hands. But if one of your hands is busy shoveling fresh lobster into your mouth, you can count on your bare toes, as there's simply no reason to own shoes if you live here.
The local gas station.
El Gigante town square.
El Gigante as seen from Playa Gigante (the beach).
Another benefit to El Gigante is that it is impossible to get lost there (as opposed to the rest of Nicaragua). There are two streets in El Gigante, so you're either on main street (pictured below) or you're heading out of town. This is the only place in Nicaragua where we didn't have to stop and ask for directions at each intersection.
There's an old lawyer joke that if there is only one lawyer in a town he'll starve to death, but if you have two lawyers in town they'll make a fortune. And as if El Gigante weren't already the perfect place to go expat, it is, indeed, a one lawyer town, just waiting for us to arrive and claim our fortune!
Our lives have been so crazy busy since we returned from Nicaragua that there have been a few times we've looked back at El Gigante and thought it might be better to set up shop across the street from this guy (which would also be nice because we would have oceanfront property), homeschool the kids, and live off of fresh fish and sun. As soon as they get a Slurpee machine in their gas station, we're there.
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