Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America and, for a long stretch, one of its most turbulent. Revolution, civil war, hurricanes, and earthquakes have all shaped the national character. But this is also a country of extraordinary natural beauty - a chain of active volcanoes runs down the Pacific coast, Lake Nicaragua is the largest in Central America and home to the world's only freshwater sharks, and the Caribbean Mosquito Coast remains one of the most remote and wild stretches of coastline in the Americas.

Nicaraguans call their country "the land of lakes and volcanoes," but they could just as easily call it the land of poets. Ruben Dario, the father of Spanish modernist poetry, is from here, and poetry is taken so seriously that taxi drivers quote verses. Colonial Granada and Leon are two of the most beautiful Spanish colonial cities in the hemisphere, volcano boarding down Cerro Negro is one of the most unusual adventure sports on Earth, and the whole country costs a fraction of neighboring Costa Rica. Nicaragua is Central America before the crowds found it.