Southern Nicaragua may be different than you expect. The people are exceptionally friendly and open minded. For instance I entered this internet shop with Bentley at my side and it wasn´t a problem. It is certainly not ordinary but nobody seems to judge that behavior as strange, they just see it as interesting and unusual.
If you’ve been to Costa Rica you’ve seen lots of razor wire, security guards with machine guns, iron bars on every window and big brick walls around the nice homes. It’s not that way here in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua. People park on the street without fear of their car being broken into. No bars and few security guards.
The only guard, with a gun, that I´ve seen in SJDS was at the bank. Well actually he was at the bar across from the bank. I guess he had a better view of the bank from there :).
I was told that people are more friendly here because they are burned out on war and don’t want anymore violence. Maybe.
There is lots of potential here. The principal problems are political. The good news is that there is a robust effect towards law and order and participative (less corrupt) government. The bad news is the both the left and right are extremely corrupt and have joined forced to combat the ‘threat’.