MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Nicaragua

Riding Isla de Ometepe by motorcycle means tracing the figure-eight shape drawn by its two volcanoes, joined by a narrow isthmus: Concepción, still active at 1,610 meters, and Maderas, dormant and covered in cloud forest, at 1,394 meters.

The name comes from the Nahuatl ome (two) and tepetl (mountain), "the place of the two mountains". UNESCO declared the whole island a Biosphere Reserve in 2010, and at 276 km² it is the largest volcanic island in the world inside a freshwater lake.

You reach it by ferry from San Jorge, near Rivas, on a roughly one-hour crossing over Lake Cocibolca. Once ashore, the paved road between Moyogalpa and Altagracia runs out and gives way to the loose dirt that circles Maderas, the stretch that separates the curious rider from the one who only came to see the volcano from the ferry railing.

Riding to Cerro Negro by motorcycle means reaching the youngest volcano in all of Central America: it was born out of nothing in 1850 and has erupted more than twenty times since, most recently in 1999.

The road leaves León heading north, passes the boiling mud pools of San Jacinto, and pushes into the Cordillera de los Maribios, the chain of volcanoes that dominates the region's landscape, before ending in a stretch of black volcanic sand at the foot of the cone.

In 2004, Australian Darryn Webb, owner of the Bigfoot hostel in León, built a wooden board mounted on a sheet of metal to ride down Cerro Negro's slope at speed, after failed attempts with a mini fridge, a mattress, and even his own front door. That's how volcano boarding was born, the sport that turned this volcano into a mandatory stop for anyone passing through León, on two wheels or not.

Riding from San Juan del Sur to Popoyo by motorcycle means tracing part of Nicaragua's 350 km of Pacific coastline, along a strip of surf beaches that still has no paved road running end to end.

The track crosses roughly a dozen unbridged river fords before reaching Popoyo, where four world-class breaks sit within a 15-minute walk of each other; the specialist outlet ADV Pulse documented this stretch as one of the rawest "trails and waves" rides in Central America.

Expect loose cattle on the road, not signage: a cow standing in the middle of the dirt track is as much a fixture of this ride as the Pacific sunset waiting at the end of it.

Riding up Masaya Volcano by motorcycle is one of the few rides in the world where a paved road leaves you standing right at the edge of an active lava lake.

Spanish conquistadors named it "the Mouth of Hell": in 1529, friar Blas del Castillo planted a wooden cross on the rim of the Santiago crater, convinced the glowing lava was molten gold and that the cross would hold back the demon he believed lived below.

In 1979 it became Nicaragua's first national park, and today the Santiago crater still degasses continuously, its lava lake visible from the overlook, no hike, no harness, just the bike parked meters from the edge.

Riding from Granada to Mombacho Volcano by motorcycle links the oldest colonial city in the Americas still standing on its original site, founded in 1524 by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, with a 1,344-meter volcano that holds its own cloud forest.

Mombacho's upper slopes host more than 700 plant species and 87 recorded orchid species, many endemic to the volcano itself, alongside coffee plantations that take advantage of the altitude and constant humidity.

From the summit lookout you can see the Isletas de Granada archipelago scattered across Lake Cocibolca, the same paved coastal road the bike follows before climbing the final dirt stretch up to the reserve.

Riding the Pueblos Blancos Circuit by motorcycle means crossing seven towns on the Meseta de los Pueblos, Catarina, San Juan de Oriente, Diriá, Diriomo, Niquinohomo, Nandasmo and Masatepe, named for their colonial adobe façades painted white.

From the Catarina lookout, at 620 meters above sea level, you look straight down onto Laguna de Apoyo: a caldera formed roughly 23,000 years ago when the ground collapsed after an explosive pumice eruption, 200 meters deep, making it the lowest point in all of Central America.

San Juan de Oriente keeps a Chorotega-rooted pottery tradition alive, and Niquinohomo is the town where Augusto C. Sandino was born, two stops that make this short loop the ride with the most history and craftsmanship per kilometer on the whole list.

Climbing the Matagalpa-Jinotega highway by motorcycle means riding what the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario called "the most picturesque road in Nicaragua": just 32 km of tight curves through mountains blanketed in coffee plantations.

It was built in the early 1950s, under the government of Anastasio Somoza García, as a response to the urgent need to speed up the transport and sale of coffee to the rest of the country.

The road holds between 1,350 and 1,500 meters above sea level, the ideal altitude for the high-quality coffee this region produces, and ends in Jinotega, the "City of Mists," a nickname that explains itself the moment you see fog roll over the valley almost every morning.

Riding from León to Las Peñitas by motorcycle is barely 20 minutes of pavement, but it connects the oldest university city on Nicaragua's Pacific side with two black volcanic-sand beaches sitting side by side: Las Peñitas and Poneloya.

From Las Peñitas you enter the Isla Juan Venado Nature Reserve, a mangrove strip over 20 km long where, between August and December, olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) come ashore to nest, a sight best seen at night, in silence.

It's the go-to beach for backpackers and surfers passing through León: steady breaks for beginners and advanced riders alike, close enough to reach by motorcycle in the afternoon and still sleep back in the city.

Reaching Somoto Canyon by motorcycle means crossing northern Nicaragua's mountains along pine-forest roads that for centuries were known only to the people of Las Sabanas and San Lucas; science only discovered the site in 2004, when Czech geologist Jaroslav Šebesta and colleagues from UNAN-Managua carried out the first formal geological survey.

Before that date, the formation already had a local name: Namancambre, "bone" in the Ulúa-Matagalpa language, for the shape of its stone walls.

The canyon formed between 5 and 13 million years ago, in the Miocene, and its walls reach 120 to 150 meters high at the point where the Comalí and Tapacalí rivers join to form the Río Coco, the longest river in Central America.

Riding up the Cosigüina Peninsula by motorcycle means reaching the rim of one of Nicaragua's largest craters, the site of one of the most violent eruptions ever recorded in Central America.

On January 20, 1835, the volcano erupted with a VEI 5 force: detonations were heard as far as Jamaica, ash reached Mexico City, 1,400 km away, and the event lowered the planet's average temperature by about 0.75 degrees for months.

Today the crater measures 2.5 km across with a lagoon at the bottom, and from its rim, known as the Mirador de los Tres Países, the Three Countries Lookout, you can see El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua in a single turn of the head, over the waters of the Gulf of Fonseca.