Location

Playa Gigante Village

“Playa Gigante” literally means, “Giant Beach” in Spanish. The locals simply call the place, “Gigante.” It is one in a string of beaches along the spectacular Tola coast of Southwestern Nicaragua. Gigante Beach forms an embayment that is more sheltered than adjoining beaches, providing the only safe anchorage for small fishing boats between San Juan del Sur and El Astillero.

For such a small, sparsely populated beach, Gigante has been the site of a number of interesting footnotes to Nicaragua’s history. Over the past two centuries Gigante has served as a landing spot for the famous American filibuster William Walker (mid 19th century), been owned by former Nicaraguan strong man Anastasio Somoza (mid 20th century), suffered a devastating tsunami (1992), and been the site of a planned Pacific port for a trans-isthmian railroad known as the “Dry Canal” (late 1990s, early 2000s)

In the 1980s more than 1000 acres immediately behind the beach were redistributed to 80 Sandinista farmers and their families through the process of agrarian reform. This people of this farming cooperative (named “Pedro Joaquin Chamorro” after the famous national martyr and publisher of the newspaper La Prensa) and those from the local fishing cooperative created the social and economic fabric that defines Gigante today.

The last half decade has witnessed a rash of changes in the village. Electricity arrived in Gigante in 2000, and a new all-weather (well nearly all-weather) road was built in 2002. These two development ushered in a period of real estate speculation by foreigners and wealthy Nicaraguans. This growing interest in beach real estate by outsiders coincided with a drastic increase in the number of visits made to the village by intrepid surfers trying to find the perfect wave.

Today Gigante remains a fishing village, but the fisherman now share the bay with an increasing number of foreigners and foreign-owned businesses. There are now three surf camps, three restaurants, three pulperias (corner stores), and two hotels. There are at least two more restaurants, a spa, and one more hotel currently under construction, and another surf camp in the planning stages. Finally, several new upscale housing developments have popped up in the hills surrounding the village.

Gigante is at a crossroads between its rural isolated past and its globalized tourist-oriented future. One can only hope that the transition does not leave any Giganteños behind.