San Juan del Sur

San Juan del Sur is a municipality and coastal town on the Pacific Ocean in the Rivas department of southwest Nicaragua, about 140 kilometres (87 miles) south of the capital, Managua. It sits beside a crescent-shaped bay and has a population of roughly 15,553, largely families working in fishing, tourism and the food and drink trade, together with foreign residents from North America and Europe. Its economy rested for many years on fishing and shipping and has shifted toward tourism over the last two decades; the town is popular with surfers and with Nicaraguan holidaymakers. In the 1850s it was a resting place for gold prospectors bound for California and a hub for Cornelius Vanderbilt's transit lines, and its position on the narrow isthmus of Rivas between the Pacific and Lake Nicaragua has made it the Pacific port in many Nicaragua Canal proposals. A tsunami from a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in September 1992 destroyed an estimated 60 percent of its homes. A statue of the Christ of the Mercy overlooks the bay.