In 1999, I was 23 years old and I left Florida for Nicaragua. We loaded up our 1989 Toyota pickup and drove the entire way through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, arriving thirteen days later. By the time we crossed into Nicaragua, it felt like coming home. We had a plan: open a surf lodge on the Emerald Coast. What we didn’t have was a road map for everything that would come after.

THE COW PASTURE

What I found when I got to Popoyo was a cow pasture that would one day become Popoyo Surf Lodge. In 1999, Las Salinas was a quintessential rural community where ox carts and horseback were still the main forms of transportation. No cell phones, no internet. Time seemed to stand still.

Before we could even break ground, we spent our first six weeks in the nearby village of Las Salinas, in a tiny hostel called La Tica, run by the Solis family. Warm, generous people who took in this skinny little gringa girl without a second thought. There was no power. Running water only until noon. The chickens had apparently decided my bed was the ideal place to lay their eggs every single day.

At some point I got dengue and spent days flat on my back in a dark room while bats roosted in the rafters above me. When I needed to call home, I walked to the one radio phone in the entire village. It was a little nutty. It was also the adventure of a lifetime.

When we finally moved out to the property, the original rancho was thatch with a dirt floor. No water, no power. For months, we hauled 50-gallon drums from a neighbor’s well. There was no bridge between Guasacate and Las Salinas back then, so if the river rose after heavy rains, you were stuck on whichever side you happened to be on. I brought my daughter Mikayla down to that dirt-floor rancho when she was two months old.

For the first two years, I could spend entire weeks at Popoyo without seeing another soul. Just the land, the waves, the sky, and maybe a local fisherman. That kind of stillness is almost impossible to describe to someone who knows this coast now. A handful of people alive today know what it was like before the hotels and the camps found it. I was one of them, and I feel lucky for that every single day.

FINDING OUR FOOTING

We launched as Popoyo Surf Camp, which is exactly what it was in those early years. After about five years, we made a deliberate decision to change the name to Popoyo Surf Lodge, to signal something more elevated and more intentional. A place with real standards and a real experience. It’s a distinction that still matters to us.

My daughters, Mikayla and Marina, were born in 2000 and 2005. They grew up at PSL in a way most kids could never imagine, wild and free, with Nicaragua as their backyard. It was a beautiful chapter.

In 2015, I found myself rebuilding. Keeping PSL wasn’t the obvious choice when everything else was shifting around me. Letting it fall apart, though, that wasn’t something I could live with. So I stayed. PSL and my girls kept me grounded when not much else did. And then, slowly, I found my footing again and got to work. I raised the bar on everything.

WHAT KEEPS ME HERE

At the center of everything is something I believe deeply: every single person who walks through the front gate of PSL deserves a life-changing experience. Not just a good trip. A genuinely transformative one. PSL has always been about more than surf. It’s about family, friendship, and a sense of unity that our guests feel from the moment they arrive. Our clients don’t just stay with us. They become part of the PSL family.

I also know this: most people get one week of vacation. One week away from real life, from work, from everything. That time is precious, and I take that seriously. I can’t control the waves and nobody can, but every other aspect of a guest’s stay I want to be effortless, fun, and so far beyond what they expected. After 27 years on this coast, we hold the keys to these surf breaks in a way no one else does. That knowledge, that experience, that care — that’s what we offer.

What keeps me here, more than anything, is my team. Every person who works at PSL is Nicaraguan. I hire local, only local, always have. These aren’t just employees. They are people I genuinely love, and we have built a life together. PSL supports 15 local families today, and one of my greatest joys is seeing their lives improved by their work here.

In 2019 I married Armando, who is from San Juan del Sur, so my roots here go even deeper now. I bounce between Nicaragua and Florida every couple of months, which sounds chaotic, and honestly it is. But Nicaragua always pulls me back. My garden. My dogs, cats, and chickens. My peacocks and geese who wander the property completely unbothered by surf forecasts.

My younger daughter Marina feels it too, that pull. She loves it here in the way that only happens when a place gets into your bones.

A 23-year-old from Florida. A cow pasture, a thatch roof, and a radio phone.

That’s where this started.

Twenty-seven years later, I’m still here and I’m not going anywhere. PSL remains the jewel and leader of Nicaraguan surfing, and it is an honor to share this amazing country with our guests.

— Kimberly, Founder & Owner, Popoyo Surf Lodge