Nicaragua got some attention this week in an article by the name of "Nicaragua, the New Beachfront Frontier", published in the Los Angeles Times . The article starts off with the tired old "Nicaragua is the next Costa Rica" that’s theme, but delivers quite a bit of insight immediately afterward.

From the article:

But Nicaragua's San Juan del Sur has retained its small-town charm: Burros are parked between cars in front of homegrown businesses such as El Gato Negro — the Black Cat — a popular bookstore and cafe for expats, and children play in the church plaza, which is in the middle of a face-lift. Wooden houses with tin roofs are painted in bright colors, and open-air restaurants with palm-thatched roofs line the main street along the beachfront.

Paradise comes with a few blemishes, however: mosquitoes, roosters that don't know day from night, vegetable peddlers hawking goods over megaphones and the incessant sound of hammers and drills from home construction. It's rainy half the year — about 29 inches of rainfall annually — and hot most of the time. For now, living here means relying on unreliable electricity and shaky infrastructure in general, and having a dearth of medical care. But, ah, the beaches.

"Nicaragua is wedged between the two best real estate markets in the Western Hemisphere — Costa Rica and the U.S.," said expat Sam Stewart, a former Peace Corps volunteer and current ReMax Tierra Nica agent. "We're the ugliest house on the nicest block."

OK, so it's not perfect yet. But relative ease of purchase, tax incentives, low crime and a laid-back lifestyle on a gorgeous stretch of coast make Nicaragua appealing.

Read on at the LA Times (you have to register with LA Times to read the article, unfortunately).