Granada and the 365 islets of Lake Nicaragua

Granada is the prettiest city in Nicaragua and the easiest to fall for. A colonial grid of colourful low houses, churches, and courtyards, it runs on a warm, slightly raffish energy: music in the streets, bars and food stalls busy into the night, the kind of place where the evening simply happens to you rather than being something you plan. After the rougher cities elsewhere in the country, it feels like a reward.

The thing to actually do here is get out on the water. Granada sits on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, and just offshore lies Las Isletas, an archipelago of 365 tiny islands formed when the nearby Mombacho volcano blew its top thousands of years ago and scattered its cone across the lake. You take a boat out among them in the morning, weaving between islands that range from a scrap of rock with a single tree to private retreats with their own jetties, past fishing families, an old Spanish fort, and an island colonised by rescued monkeys.

It is a gentle, unhurried couple of hours rather than a thrill, and that is the point. The water is calm, the volcano stands over the whole scene, and the islets give you a slow, low-angle view of a side of Nicaragua that is all ease and green water rather than smoke and lava.

Base yourself in Granada for a night or two, give the evening to its streets and a morning to the lake, and you have the city at its best: colonial colour by night, 365 islands by day.