Nirvana in Nicaragua

Tony Dear

Read some of the highlights from the Moon Travel Guide description of Nicaragua’s capital city: “If Managua were a vehicle, it would be a battered 1960s school bus, dented and dinged on all sides, paint chipping through multiple layers of color… It is loud and architecturally uninspiring… Though relatively safe, it doesn’t feel that way.”

Why would anyone want to visit the place after reading that?

Yet the exact same text appears on the official Nicaragua Tourism web site. That the government allocated a budget of just $3 million for tourism marketing in 2012, with the country eager to emerge from neighbor Costa Rica’s sizable shadow, also seems a little puzzling. Yes, Nicaragua is the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere according to the U.S. State Department, but $3 million? That’s less than a third what the State of Colorado alone spent on tourisminitiatives last year—after a $5 million cut—and about one-sixth what Costa Rica will spend this year.

There’s more. In January 2012, the Minister for Tourism, Mario Salinas Pasos, posted a letter on the same web site saying that in addition to great beaches, one-of-a-kind fishing, and world-class surfing, Nicaragua boasted “top golf courses.”

At the time the letter was written, however, Nicaragua’s inventory of courses stood at three—a rather flat 18-hole private track near Managua called Nejapa, and two unremarkable nine-holers on the Pacific coast. Señor Pasos’s job is to promote his country as best he can, but labeling its golf courses as “top” was stretching reality further than even the most bald-faced marketer would be prepared to go.

But get this: Tourism in Nicaragua has somehow increased by over 70 percent in the past decade; it was named one of the world’s top travel destinations for 2013 on NBC’s Today show; and in January The New York Times ranked it third on a list of 46 places to visit this year.

For a country many people still associate with political unrest in the 1980s—remember Iran-Contra and the Sandanistas?—Nicaragua is making some serious noise in the travel trade.

The truth is, Nicaragua does have an awful lot going for it – something travelers are obviously beginning to discover.

The minister was right about the fishing for instance. You can cast your line deep into the ocean in search of marlin, sailfish, barracuda and dorado; fish inshore for bonito, snapper, grouper and roosterfish; or go out on Lake Nicaragua, the second largest lake in the Americas, hunting 100lb tarpon, or 40lb snook. There are 40 volcanoes down which you can try ash-boarding, a fast-expanding eco-tourism industry, scuba diving on untouched reefs, zip-lining in the forests, and surfing so good the 2012 ISA World Masters was held here, on a beach named Playa Colorado.

And, had he delayed his comments a year, Sr. Pasos would have had a leg to stand on (albeit a short one) with regard to golf courses.

Guacalito de la Isla, part of the super-luxurious Mukul Resort & Spa 20 miles north of the gorgeous coastal town of San Juan Del Sur and about 40 miles from the Costa Rica border, was designed by David McLay Kidd who has clearly now dispensed with his fondness for theatrical, some might say over-the-top design (The Castle Course in St. Andrews, Tetherow in Oregon) in favor of playability. Indeed, the course he built here alongside senior associate Casey Krahenbuhl and eight more of his US-based staff, is playability itself.

The man behind Mukul, 60-year-old Carlos Pellas, is a multi-billionaire thought to be the wealthiest man in Latin America. A descendant of the Italian entrepreneur Francisco Alfredo Pellas, Carlos now oversees an empire that employs more than 25,000 people in the fields of banking, insurance, healthcare, media, auto, entertainment, agro-energy, rum, tourism, citrus and sugar.

But for Carlos Pellas’s acumen, resolve, and good fortune, however, the Pellas Group certainly wouldn’t be in the position it is today, and Mukul would never have happened. During the 1980s, Daniel Ortega’s leftist government nationalized much of Pellas’s business, and in 1989, Pellas and his wife Vivian were among just seven survivors when a plane taking them to the Honduran city of Tegucigalpa flew into a mountainside at 500mph.

Extreme events such as these tend to have a profound effect on a person ‘s temperament and approach to life so, in hindsight, perhaps it’s no surprise Pellas was intensely determined to restore his family’s assets once his body had healed sufficiently and Ortega had been replaced by conservative Violeta Chamorro who came to power in 1990. And so, between 1990 and 2000, he invested over quarter of a billion dollars into the country’s economy.

At the end of 2006, however, Ortega’s re-election seemed to present a significant obstacle to Pellas’s future expansion plans. But Ortega’s politics had softened somewhat and he happily gave Mukul the green light and assisted Pellas by fast-tracking it through the permitting process.

At the same time as plans for Mukul were taking shape, Pellas was heavily invested in a luxury development across the border in the Costa Rican province of Guanacaste. For the golf course at Santa Elena Preserve, Kidd had been Pellas’s first choice for designer. Pellas knew the Scot had built the impressive Nanea course in Hawaii for his fellow Stanford graduate Charles Schwab, and knew of Kidd’s policy of building sustainable layouts that sought to sit as naturally and seamlessly on the land as possible (the Castle Course in St Andrews and Huntsman Springs in Idaho not withstanding).

After a visit to Santa Elena, Pellas invited Kidd north to inspect a property he owned on Nicaragua’s Emerald Coast, right on the Pacific Ocean.

“There was obviously a great golf course underneath all the scrub,” Kidd says. “I knew it would be a major undertaking to clear it all.”

Clearing brush while retaining the mature trees would be harder still, however. But Pellas made it clear that was how it was going to be.

“Oh yes, Don Carlos (Pellas is called Don Carlos in deference to his Italian roots) was very particular about the trees,” says Kidd. “There are well over a dozen different species in the forest at Guacalito and he can identify them all. He told us if we cut down a single tree we’d be fired.”

Construction on the course began in November 2010 after it became clear governmental approval for Santa Elena was proceeding at less than snail’s pace.

Kidd soon realized Nicaragua was actually a peaceful country with friendly, welcoming people, and quickly established a good relationship with the locals by building a community baseball field, contributing to the nearby hospital, and hiring roughly 200 men to hack a path through all that brush.

“Many of them were well-skilled,” says Kidd. “So in the end, not only did they clear the brush, they were operating heavy machinery, building bridges, and performing a number of other important tasks.”

Kidd would visit the site every six weeks and stay for maybe five or six days. In his absence, Krahenbuhl would run the show. “It all went relatively smoothly,” he says. “I became good friends with a few of the locals, and was really impressed with how hard they worked.”

The golf course was completed toward the end of 2012 without, Kidd insists, the removal of a single tree. “I’d get nervous every time I heard Don Carlos’s helicopter approaching,” he says. “But we became very good at moving them.”

To move the first big tree, Kidd had hired a firm from Dallas that charged $300,000. Kidd observed how they did it and moved the rest – well over 100 trees – for something like $20,000. Shifting trees by themselves and deciding not to lay any drainage pipes – “When it rains here it’s so heavy there’s no way a pipe could handle it” – allowed Kidd and his team to come in $1 million under budget.  “Saving $1 million probably wasn’t a big deal to Don Carlos,” says Kidd. “But it was to me.”

The result may not strike visitors as a typical David McLay Kidd course. It isn’t easy by any means, but the emphasis is definitely on fun and showcasing the beauty of the land. “I don’t think it’s a bold design,” says Kidd. “But, unlike at the Castle Course or Huntsman Springs, it didn’t need to be. This is such a beautiful place, I just wanted to show it off to golfers without penalizing them too heavily for poor shots.”

There are several memorable holes, but the two most notable perhaps are the final two par 3s – the 184-yard 15th and 167-yard 18th. Krahenbuhl had the idea for the peculiar, but entertaining, Redan/Biarritz green at the 15th, but it was God that came up with the 18th—Kidd just had the good sense to go with it. The tee shot is played from the trees to a green literally built on the beach. “When we built it, we would hole out, take our shoes off and just head right out on to the sand,” says Kidd.

A round at Guacalito costs $145. To stay in one of the 37 amazing accommodations (12 beach villas each with their own private pool, 23 bohios on the cliffs overlooking Playa Manzanillo, or even Casona Don Carlos or Suite Dona Vivian when the Pellases are not home) you’d probably expect to pay more than $1,000 a night. But the tariff is $550, a bargain when you consider lodging, shuttle from the airport in Managua (a two-hour ride), breakfast, lunch and an open bar are all included in the price.

And considering the open bar could mean a glass or two of Flor de Caña, a world-renowned rum owned by Don Carlos (you can by helicopter to the distillery near the San Cristóbal Volcano in the northwest of the country, then repair to Don Carlos’s plantation house for a lunch prepared by his personal chef), the price just seems all the more reasonable.

What else might convince you Guacalito de la Isla and the Mukul Resort should become part of your travel plans (just get from Denver to Miami, Atlanta, Houston, or Fort Lauderdale for direct flights to Managua)? How about a clifftop spa comprising six finely-appointed casitas, each with its own distinct architecture, interior design, and range of treatments? How about the superb Nicaraguan-inspired food on offer at La Terraza or La Mesa restaurants? How about the sort of efficient but friendly service you find in only a limited number of places around the world?

Other luxury golf resorts are in the pipeline for Nicaragua – Montecristo, designed by Mike Young, is being built on the Pacific Coast an hour west of Managua, and Milagro Del Mar, a few miles to the south, will have 27 holes in play by 2015. It’s unlikely either can match Guacalito for sheer natural beauty.

Carlos Pellas could have retired long ago, but he felt compelled to leave a lasting legacy for the country he loves. After falling for the place, David McLay Kidd became just as committed to leaving his own gentle, but unmistakable, footprint. Building the first major golf course in a Central American nation with the hope it might inspire similar developments and thus bolster the country’s tourism industry and provide good jobs was something Kidd took very seriously.

“I knew what we did here would likely impact what came after it,” he says. “So it had to be environmentally sound and a course people would enjoy. I wanted to leave a benchmark; set the bar high. I certainly felt a burden of responsibility.”

For further information about Mukul, mukulresort.com; 800-390-8844

 

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.