The Playa Santana Project - how Castaways was created.

Castaways Nicaragua was created sustainably and in an eco-friendly way. Through an international volunteer program, Nicaraguan building expertise and the owners dreams' this is a brief look at how it came together.

Without the Playa Santana Project - there would be no Castaways Nicaragua... The owners of would become Castaways, set up some tents and began camping and building the foundations of what would become the two casitas. Memories were created and as we looked behind us towards Limon Dos, we saw nothing in those fields. There were no roads or buildings, only wild horses. Those were the days... Over the next few months, a group of international volunteers joined the team and on site helping out we had people from France, Australia, England, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa and Croatia. Joining this United Nations setup, our local Nicaraguan builders, many of whom come from the nearby town of Virgen Morena. Sustainability and leaving a light carbon footprint were priorities for us and so we decided to build beautiful thick walls for our casitas using the oldest material known to man - earth. Days were spent filling earthbags/superadobe, plastering with local clay, shaving the bark off of freshly delivered tree trunks and exchanging ideas in English and Spanish. We sat in the shade together, sipped drinks and laughed a lot as little by little, progress was made. If there were waves, we grabbed our boards and ran down to the beach, learning the local breaks as we went. Bonfires were a regular occurrence and we wheelbarrowed our offcuts of wood down there, with a guitars, cold beers and awaited the night sky and brilliant stars. At low tide, we played a friendly game of soccer against the local roof builders in the area. We won on golden goal and they dropped the price every so slightly.

After 4 months, two gorgeous casitas emerged from what had been an empty field. From there we were able to base ourselves and plan the construction of the Pub. During that phase of construction we had people from Italy and Czech Republic also join us and our local builders from Virgen Morena, Las Cañas and Isla Ometepe. These were the first steps in the creation of Castaways Nicaragua - but the future is looking brighter still.