I have been trying to decide for a couple of months if I want to head to Guatemala or Nicaragua this summer. I have six nights in mid July for a trip and it will be my first to Central America. I will be going solo. Has anyone been to both places?

I am either going to travel to Antigua, Guatemala and spends a few days there and the surrounding areas, or I am going to head to Granada, Nicaragua and some of the islands on the lake.

I am looking for some advice from people that have been to both countries. Based on what I've read it seems that Nicaragua is safer and that is why I am leaning in that direction (this being my first trip down there). Any advice would be appreciated.

ive been to both in the last 3 years. I did Granada over Easter (if you can, search for the thread on it, I posted pictures). I also did Flores, Guatemala (Tikal) and really enjoyed it. I have not been to Antigua, but I honestly feel both are relatively safe. Are you planning on staying in a hostel? Nicaragua is still more recent on my mind, but I really was impressed by how clean the town was and by the general niceness of everyone. If you have any specific questions about Granada, Id be happy to try to answer it, and can probably recommend some things there.

Been to both, loved them both. I guess it all depends more on what you want to do. You're comparing going to the mountains vs. going to the lakes, which are pretty different things, so I would probably base your decision more on which activities you'd rather do. Are you going to be travelling around much or just sticking with the main destination city?

Regardless of your decision, you'll love it. Enjoy.

Antigua was great, but requires a little more travel to get to other site seeing areas, like Atitlan(2 hours), volcano hiking(2 hours), etc... Not alot to do in town except learn spanish and spend a day exploring the colonial city... there are coffee plantations close by.

I haven't been to Granade ( want to go though), but I have researched it and learned alot of defroach's post about it... it sounds pretty amazing and with alot of things close by.

Antigua will be cooler temperature wise in the mountains.

Defroach, is Granada lower and warmer?

[This message has been edited by jpb1999 (edited 5/26/2009 12:41p).]

I live in Managua and have spent quite a bit of time in Guatemala. Here is what I would say:

Cost: Nicaragua is cheaper and you get more bang for you buck.

Safety: Nicaragua is about a zillion times safer than Guatemala. You can go out and about on your own and you should have no problems.

Things to do: IMO, you run out of things to do in Granada pretty quickly, but you can get to several places relatively easily for day or easy overnight trips, i.e. Ometepe Island, Pacific Beaches, Apoyo Lagoon, volcanos, canopy tours, etc.
As mentioned, the travel from Antigua to many spots is longer and I just do not like traveling at all in Guatemala. But, IMO there is more to do in Antigua than Granada and the choices for food and such are better, it is just more touristy.

Adventure: See safety above and doing anything in Nicaragua is always an adventure as you never know what is going to happen.

My recommendation to anyone visiting Nicaragua is to try and make it out to the Corn Islands. It is what you imagine a small undeveloped Caribbean island to be and it is very pretty and very full of adventure. Civilization, sanity, and dullness bypassed the Corn Islands. I love it out there.

You usually meed more laid back folks in Nicaragua as it is a budget location for many folks, particularly European. If you are young and single, I would go with Nicaragua all the way as there are tons of young European backpacker chicks/dudes roaming around the country. I would have liked to have been single down here about 10 years ago.

Oh, to answer a question about weather. The US summertime is "winter" here or the rainy season. In the mornings it will be hot and humid and by the PM it will be raining like hell and humid, with a twist of hot. Granada is probably right at sea level or so. It sits on big muddy lake Nicaragua (Cocibolca).

I have not been to Nicaragua, but what you describe sounds exactly like Guatemala. There are tons of European backpackers and I thought it was very safe, cheap, and easy to travle around. Heck I backpacked from Yaxha to the guatemala/belize border. Now Nicaragua might be more of all the above, but from my experience in Guatemala it has to be close to the same.

In fact. all of the Europeans and Aussies that I traveled with was doing a circuit through most of CA and SA... so all of the ones you would have incountered in Nicaragua would have also been in Guatemala.

I went in mid-April, it was in the 90s and humid. However, it never really felt it, there was always a breeze and I never really was hot....

jbp:

Guatemala is such a rich and beautiful country, I am always sad when I am there due to how dangerous it is, and belive you me it is dangerous.

I grew up in Latin America, and I just never feel right when I am someplace (namely Guatemala and Honduras) where you are one person or one little instance away from disaster. I have felt uncomfortable and threatened in both those countries (and also in Costa Rica for that matter) and when that happens to me I just am not groovy with it.

I think one of the big differences between Guatemala and Nic. would be that you do not have the huge indiginous population in Nic. that you do in Guat. Is that good or bad? To me, neither it is just different. Nicaragua is the largest country in CA, but has the smallest population, so even in the cities and such it never feels crowded.

To me the cool thing about Nicaragua is that you can get to decent and safe places easily and feel totally at ease with a minimum of worry about robbery, violence and the like. If you get off the beaten path Nicaragua is much cheaper than the other surrounding places, it is after all the just behind Haiti on the poverty scale in this hemisphere.

The other thing that I like about Nicaragua is that there is such an eclectic(sp) mix of people and cultures here that it is always interesting. People don't pick up on that, but it is one of the charms that goes unnoticed at the onset by visitors.

RGV, how did you get a job in Managua? I'd love to somehow land a position that took me somewhere in Latin America.

New World,

I work in the apparel industry, on the manufacturing side. Nicaragua and Haiti are about the last places, and fading fast, that apparel can be manufactured in this Hemisphere relatively competetively.

The company I currently work for had two plants in Mexico that I ran for 3 years up until late 2005. We decided to open another plant up down here in 2006 and thus here I am. I don't exactly have a skill set that is much in demand in this part of the world anymore.

Gringo's can get jobs in these countries, but it is getting harder to, due to the economics of hiring a Gringo. If you really want to work down here make sure you speak Spanish and probably the best way is as a teacher at one of the private bilingual schools. Once you get here, then other things open up for you usually.

I honestly do not want to live in the States again, but I will probably have to due to wife and economics at some point. I do enjoy the hell out of being in LA.