Building a Surf Resort in Nicaragua

Week 8 - day 1 - final week....hopefully

2010-01-07T17:32:00.000-08:00

It is now the 8th week of building, all they need to do is plaster the walls now and add the zinc on the roof in which we ordered last week and it is still not here....we cancelled the order and went to a different ferreteria (store), the zinc is coming tomorrow morning at 8am.

Cool photo of our contractor (Amado) with the view of our house in the background from the middle of our property.

Putting together the roof above our patio

Side view of our house...we are thinking of painting the surf ranch logo on that wall on the left as it will be facing the new road/path coming into our property.

Looking inside the house from the front door. Our kitchen and bar will be on the right and couch on the left.

This will be our view when were doing the dishes, cant complain.

Week 7 - day 1 - roof is going up

2010-01-07T17:02:00.001-08:00

The first day of week 7 - they plastered the inside walls for the past week and its a little past schedule but we finally got the perlines, the iron beams for the roof. They just placed them on the roof for now and then the next step is to weld them together then add the zinc panels on top.

Looking out our front door.

The perlines we just ordered - they had to paint them with a green protective coating

Back of the house, we might make a little garden back here, grow some chiles, and various vegetables.

Our camera kind of sucks for detail, but this was a really nice sunset, behind the trees is the Pacific Ocean.

As you can see, we now have some electricity, but its just from the generator, for the night guard, because we keep forgetting to buy him batteries for the flashlight we bought him haha.

Week 6 - day 2

2010-01-07T16:13:00.001-08:00

It is now day 2 of week 6...the house should be done this week as signed on the contract. All of the walls are now up, and they are starting to plaster the walls. It is looking good...our vision is finally coming a reality.

Our new surf boards we bought, I bought the bigger one 6"6, for $100 USD.

Plastering the bedroom walls

Outside photo of the walls up

Filling in the top beam of the house

Photo of the house from the side

Week 4 - Seeing progress and Remanso Beach

2009-12-14T09:10:00.000-08:00

So it is now the end of week 4 -today we drove to the closest beach from our property (Remanso Beach), to time how long it would take, it is only a 9 minute drive with decent surf. Perfect!

Remanso Beach

The walls are starting to take shape

Paid one of our night guards $60 to chop down all the overgrown grass and weeds, looks a lot better now, still think $60 here in Nicaragua was a little too much, could of got away with cheaper, but not complaining.

You can see how we tucked away the house/office in the back corner, to open up the rest of the land for the resort.

The crew still working on the walls.

Costa Rica Border Run

2009-12-14T08:53:00.001-08:00

Okay so we have been here for 3 months now...so we have to leave the country and come back, all we have to do here in san juan del sur, is drive 30 minutes to the costa rican border and pay a little bit more and you can come right back to Nicaragua, it took us about 2 hours to do everything and was a lot easier than we thought, here are some photos of the drive.

Luke and Travis driving to costa rica

Volcano on ometepe island and road out of san juan del sur

wind generators on the way to costa rica

Abandoned building off of the highway

There was a couple miles of semi trucks lined up, but with our land cruiser, we could rip through, I think they were pissed off, but we weren't going to wait 2 days.

Week 3 - paintball bunker and walls go up

2009-12-14T08:07:00.000-08:00

Trail leading to one of the bunkers we are building for the paintball course

Dug out the area for the bunker

The walls are starting to go up

yes, finally done the diggin

Luke pointing down the path we just cleared to the bunker

Walls going up all around the house

This is the bedroom

Soon to be bathroom

Travis testing out the bunker with a termite gun

Sandbags filled, first layer down, 4 more rows to go

Week 2 - Friday - fixing up the pool table

2009-12-01T12:14:00.000-08:00

Okay so the walls are getting a little taller and its also time to paint and varnish the pool table

Bathroom walls going up

Travis sanding down the pool table.

Luke painting the white stripe around the pool table

First coat done

Alomost done...just needs another coat of varnish, new pockets and the velt cleaned! All in all, worth every dollar.

Week 2 - Day 1 - walls going up, and bought a pool table?

2009-12-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

Day 1 of the second week, we have more cement blocks coming in, workers put some walls up, and we bought a pool table....couldnt resist, it was only $150 bucks. But the plan is to fix it up.

One of the delivery trucks with more sand.

Putting up some of the walls

Luke, Mike, Travis and our new pool table

Testing out the table

Started to feel like a dick, playing pool while they are working...one more shot!

Day off - skateboarding and sunsets

2009-12-01T11:24:00.000-08:00

So today is saturday...our day off, we heard about this mini ramp for the past year on a website called www.nicaskatepit.com, and have always wanted to skate it. We met the owners and they took us there...it is actually at their house and they were very nice to let us skate it, nevermind spoil us with beers, cook us dinner and showed us their skateboarding game on the wii. Too cool!

Travis learning blunts to fakie

Our buddy William from France, fs noseblunt

Luke doing a backside 5-0 nosegrab

They even let us jump off their roof into the pool.

Enjoying our day off skateboarding, drinking beers and watching the sunset, perfect day!

Day 4 - Building a small house in Nicaragua

2009-11-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

Day 4

This is Travis's drawing of what the casita will somewhat look like.

Laying down the first cement blocks.

They made this to seperate the fine sand from the rocky sand, so they can make smoother cement.

Nice view of our property, vehicle and workers building the house.

More cement blocks arriving, these are the smaller ones for the inner walls.

This is how they make cement, then add piedrin and water.

Pooring cement to hold up the rebar supports.

View of our property with the new electrical post.

Travis writing down every single step...who knows...maybe we can write a book about this in the future.

Day 4 is over, tomorrow...we will be working on the walls.

Day 3 photos - power pole installed and more materials have arrived

2009-11-18T18:01:00.001-08:00

Day 3

They installed the power line to our property border in an hour, just need to install the cables now.

Luke yelling at everyone and scaring them off into the jungle

sweet...our piedrin and arena finally arrived (sand and rocks)

unloading the truck

Nice sunset coming home from a long day of work.

Day 1 and 2 - Building the carekeepers hut

2009-11-18T17:24:00.001-08:00

Day 1 and 2 of building - We are starting off by building the carekeepers hut. It is 660 sq ft and will include a storage area, living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, closets and a big porch. We have 6 - 11 guys working per day, and will be done in 6 weeks.

Boundaries for our new carekeepers hut - closest square is the bedroom, furthest rectangle square is the storage, kitchen, living space and bathroom, the furthest left square that goes off the camera is the porch.

Me and my bro with 700 of our cement blocks that just arrived

Workers laying out the boundaries of our carekeepers hut. We drew the plans on google sketchup (cool program), then printed them out for them.

One of the workers, hacking away at the overgrown grass surrounding our well. Drove to Rivas today to buy them a pulley, rope and buckets to get water from the well to mix cement in a couple days.

Standing where the bedroom and bathroom will be.

Travis with 700 cement blocks in the background, we need 1300 more.

Half of our land is overgrown with grass, so we had to make our own path to get to the entrance. Its pretty cool, because it hides the building materials from the locals passing by on the front road. But in a month, during the dry season, it will all dry up anyways.

The section of land that we had locals hack away with their machetes, so we could build the carekeepers hut, only cost 15 bucks for 2 guys to clear it out. We just used the jeep to do the rest.

Talking with the workers at the little work base they made. Getting the rope ready to test out how deep the water in the well is.

Our new landcruiser that we are renting for $300 a month. Awesome deal.

Back to Nicaragua - 2nd time

2009-09-14T12:34:00.000-07:00

Alright, finally, after waiting almost 7 months since the last trip, we are back off to Nicaragua again!

We arrived at the airport and rented a toyota hilux from hertz car rental in the airport...we picked them because they were the cheapest and gave us an extra day free. It cost about $240 USD to rent it for 4 days. From the airport, we headed north to Leon. We didn't really find anything cool about Leon, I bet there is a lot to do, but we just drove through and headed to Las Penitas, right on the beach!

Toyota Hilux we rented at the airport.

Nicaraguan making a living. I guess he ignored the fact we had windshield wipers.

Ruins in Leon

Beach at Las Penitas

Me and Travis enjoying the sun

Local kid bringing home dinner.

We stayed there 1 night, then headed straight through Managua and to Granada. On the way out of Las penitas, there was a construction road block and when we pulled over to wait in line, we noticed our tire was flat. So some Nicaraguans who were heading into the same direction, got out and changed the tire for us...it was pretty cool because we offered them money and cigarettes and they didn't take them. It's weird because most Nicaraguans would be all over that. It definitely opened my eyes. I think it was more of a pride thing for them.

Flat Tire

Max and Gina on the left, who we met in Las Penitas, they ended up spending the next 2 weeks traveling with us. They are really cool people.

This guy was pretty sweet.

An hour later, we got our spare tire on and headed to Granada. We ended up on a beach and opened our tailgate and drank a couple beers. Then remembered the Stanley Cup Finals were on that night and the only place we new that it would be playing at was in San Juan Del Sur, a couple hours away, so we headed to San Juan Del Sur, and caught the last period. Wow that was an amazing game!

We stayed in San Juan Del Sur for the night, then decided to head over to Ometepe Island the next day. We waited at the docks for a couple hours for the ferry to show up, then drove onto the ferry, and arrived on the island an hour later. It was pretty cool because nobody really had vehicles except for us. So we picked up a lot of hitchikers, who we ended up hanging out with later in San Juan Del Sur. But we spent a couple hours driving to the otherside of Ometepe Island, trying to find Monkey Island Hostel, because we wanted to kayak out to monkey island.

View of both volcanoes on Ometepe Island

Another cool shot of Ometepe

The Ferry we took over to the island

Travis steering the ship!

Cheers Max!

A cool natural pool we came across, cost 2 bucks to enter though

Volcano (forget which one) on Ometepe

The next day, we rented kayaks and headed out to monkey island. Man this place is crazy! I bet if you step foot on their island, they would kill you. We tested it out by getting close until they all came running out of the bushes. If you are ever in Nicaragua, this is a must! Too much fun.

2 monkeys guarding the entrance to their island

Getting too close!

Kayaking to Monkey Island with the volcano in the background

They had a pretty cool looking model of the island...on the island.

Heading back to the mainland

We spent a couple hours kayaking the islands and testing the monkeys, then drove back to the ferry and stayed in Granada for the night. All I can say is we partied big time.

This is one of the only shots we took in Granada, sorry there are no party photos, we left the camera at the hostel...it was probably a good thing though.

The next day we returned the vehicle at the airport in Managua and all pitched in for a taxi ($50USD) down to San Juan Del Sur. We stayed in San Juan Del Sur for 3 days or so, just relaxing, and finishing up business deals....

Taxi back down to San Juan del Sur

Nice view of San Juan Del Sur

New Jesus statue on the hill

Packing our surfboards to go surfing for the day

Max and Travis chillin

Watching the sunset, drinking beers in san juan del sur.

Pretty cool sunset!

We then headed back to the airport and took the la costena airlines plane over to Big Corn Island in the Caribbean, which is still Nicaragua, then boated over to Little Corn Island, which is pretty small, doesn't even have roads or cars on it. It felt like the movie, Castaway.

This is the plane we took

View of Big Corn Island

Little Corn Island...this is where we stayed

Travis and some kind of bird...I guess he couldn't fly for some reason.

Nothing better than making your own fire, gathering your own wood and collecting your own coconuts.

Other people we met and partied with on the island.

We partied into the night.

We stayed here for a couple days, then headed back to Managua and took the plane home the next morning. This trip was more about fun, than business, but it was definitely needed to get an idea of what the rest of Nicaragua has to offer, as when we are building the resort in San Juan Del Sur, we wont have a lot of time to go explore the country, until it is complete.

This trip was a success!

(Check out more trip photos at my facebook page - Lucas Boychuk - or click here )

Visit our website at www.surfranchnicaragua.com for more details and progress on the resort)

Off to Nicaragua for the first time

2009-04-07T17:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is it...off to Nicaragua we go. Travis's first time out of Canada, so he has no idea what to expect. After 4 stops, and almost 18 hours later, we finally get to Nicaragua. Right when we got out of the airport, the sun and humidity put smiles on our faces. From the airport, we walked right across the highway...to the Best Western, in which we paid 100 USD for 2 of us...that's pretty expensive for Nicaragua...but we had no choice...we were tired.

Travis in the Seattle Airport

On our way to Nicaragua

Before we flew down, we arranged 1 tour with only 1 real estate agent...Brooke Rundle from Coldwell bankers...(http://www.cbnicaragua.com/bio_brooke_rundle.php), so she set us up with an air conditioned shuttle the next day, from Managua to San Juan Del Sur....it took a couple hours, cost 80 USD for 2, including a tip, but sure sounded better than taking the chicken bus. - http://www.adelanteexpress.com/

Luke (me) in the Adelante Express

Travis, first prime time in hours!

Taking photos out the window...randoms

Our driver of the shuttle bus

We get to the sunny tropical town of San Juan Del Sur about 3 in the afternoon. The shuttle bus driver asks us where we were staying, and we said, pick one for us that is cheap. So he pulled up to a small place with rooms, a block from the beach, and it cost us 5 bucks for both of us for the night, so we were stoked. The place was not the cleanest, but that was the best part, we were finally here, in Nicaragua.

Our first room - 5 bucks a night...not bad!

We spent the next couple of days surfing, boogey boarding exploring and drinking. Then off to Coldwell bankers to meet Brooke Rundle. She was a down to earth person, and it was sure good to see a young north american down here, living and having an awesome time.

Exploring San Juan Del Sur Bay, near the cliffs

Didn't bring any water with us...so we had to find some...

Decent sized surf for San Juan Del Surs half moon bay. There is better surfing over at Maderas, Remanso or Yankee Beach.

Two brothers, having fun!

So off we went, looking for land in the $40,000 range and under. We went to the top of hill tops, to flat pieces of land, 2 minutes from the beach, but none of it really did anything for us, and only at $40,000, we still thought they were overpriced. What exactly did we want to do with our land...make a house?...business? resort? that was the question we couldn't answer ourselves.
So back to San Juan Del Sur, and a big thank you to Brooke for taking us around. Thanks Brooke!

One of the properties we checked out near Marsella Beach

Luke checking out the view and plot of land on a hill

Brooke and Luke, checking out the beach near the property in Marsella.

That was it, the search was over, we got the info we needed, time to have fun for the next week and a half, before we head back home.

The next day, we decided to explore around after a boogeyboard session in San Juan Del Sur, as the tide was too small to surf. We walked across a cool new bar being renovated, then a "hey you guys from canada?"

"Hi my name is John Casey, you guys having fun? Like my new bar?

John Casey showing us his surf resort

After a couple minutes talking with John, we found ourselves on a tour with John in his bar that was currently being renovated...it was like no other bar in San Juan Del Sur...his style of work is amazing! Such a cool guy, right away, I think he became our idol, this is what we want to be doing.

Next day, we find ourselves at his sandwich shop, turns out, he owns a bar, sandwich shop, las cascadas bed and breakfast, as well as a....surf lodge. We stayed a couple nights at his bed and breakfast, and spent the rest of our vacation with John, taking in as much information as we could. John Casey is a project developer from California, left the hustle and bustle, grew his hair long, and is now living the life in Nicaragua.

Staying in the "Shark room" at Las Cascadas - John Caseys place

Enjoying the patio

Johns Surf Resort he was building

Johns workers...working on the pool

The water tower....cool design

One night, we went to his place to talk about land. He told us his buddy, was selling 2 acres, a couple minutes away, with water and power in place...and it was titled. "Do you guys want to check it out tomorrow" said John.

So the next day, off we go to check out this land. Here are some photos below.

Front of the land...looking towards the back

Right front of land...looking to the left front...along the dirt road

River behind the piece of land...

Left front side of land looking towards the back...you can kind of see the sticks...where the well is.

Luke walking down the road to the 2 acre piece of land

Stoked there is a well on the property...now is their water?

Yeah!!! There is water

Back of the property before the river...ideas are brewing? paintball course maybe?

River in the back of the property

Travis and our driver...checking out the land...walking to the back

It took Travis and I probably 12 hours to think and talk about it, and then the next day, we told John..."Lets do it...we want to buy this land". This was a gut feeling for the both of us....we just had to do it....it felt right. So we spent the next couple days with an attorney, and interpreter, and organized the escutira, etc... way easier than we have read online...but we did research before hand and asked and got the answers to all of the questions we needed to. This was a no brainer as we got 4 times the size of land for less than 40,000, as what we were looking at with Coldwell Bankers. Plus we only had to put down a $1000 deposit, then pay the rest later. We got a great deal and were both and still are happy with it.

We did it...we bought the land!

Okay...so now what to make on it? We decided to make an extreme sports resort which offers surfing, skateboarding, paintball, kayaking, horseback riding, volleyball and any extreme sport we can think of. Now all we need is the money....we need investors...the hunt begins.

Below you will find random photos of our trip:

Party time!

Our new buddies!

Too drunk at this point

Getting drunker!

That's what Travis is going to look like after a couple years in Nicaragua...I swear!

Every night, chill, drink and play pool!

Dont even remember getting them to do this!

Yeahh!!! After making the land deal...staying in our 10 dollar room.

me, (luke), gina and Travis

Me, Francis and Travis

This is how we got around...back of the truck...awesome ride!

Travis

Luke

Soccer at sunset...I think next time, its time to bring the canon 40d camera.

Sunsets like this every night!

Back to Canada we come, get home, pass out! Waked up the next morning, thinking it was all a dream, but then realized...man, we just bought 2 acres of land in Nicaragua.

Introduction

2009-04-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

So here I am, surfing the web, in the winter months of Canada. What am I searching for? Am I looking for a way out? I think so. I need a plan, a plan to escape before I get caught up in the daily routines and obsessions in this North American "society". My name is Luke Boychuk, I am 22 years old, and I do not know what my purpose in life is, all I know is that I have to live it, and I can't do it here.

So I come across a random posting stating that land is cheap in Nicaragua. Yeah, but how cheap? So I spend the next couple hours researching, and was definitely interested. I tell my girlfriend Jodie and she was pretty stoked on it as well, we talk about "dreams" and what we could do, then fall asleep. Next day comes, next week comes, and I forget about it.

1 month later, I get a package in the mail, hmm...I surprisingly open it up, and it is a book about "Living and Investing in the New Nicaragua" by Christopher Howard. Right away, I knew Jodie ordered it for me, so I call her up and thank her. It turns out if she didnt do this for me, I would of pursued something else.

So the obession began, I am the type of person who once I have my mind set on something, I do it until the end. Now the journey begins. I spend months researching and taking in as much as I can.

I needed a partner, someone to share this with, and nobody better to trust then my younger brother, Travis Boychuk. I knew that he would be 150 percent stoked on the idea, and sure enough, he was. Travis is 20 years old, and shares the same motivation as me, we are brothers, as well as friends. After a couple weeks of idea swapping, we finally did it...we booked 2 tickets to Nicaragua. 3 weeks later, we were gone...just to check it out to see if we would like it.