Nicaragua, The hidden sensei in San Juan del Sur

After my incredible week in El Salvador I flew over to Nicaragua to truly start my backpacking experience. No safety net from a pre-paid organized camp where I don’t have to think about anything except enjoy. I had already did some research online about BJJ in Nicaragua and found out that there wasn’t much of it. I do admit that I did not ask anybody in the Globetrotters community for tips on it and I kinda decided that my Nicaragua trip was gonna be mainly touristy. While staying my one night in Managua, not really an interesting city I did see 2 MMA gyms with probably some BJJ but didn’t have time to investigate further.

Met some great people along the way.

Did a photoshoot in a middle of a lake.

So I spent about 2 weeks in Nicaragua, I enjoyed my stay there to the fullest, touristing around and travelling with other backpackers and for my last weekend I had worked my way down south to a town called San Juan del Sur, close to the border of Costa Rica. I planned to stay there only 2 nights.

So now I was already missing BJJ so much that I wanted to head straight into Costa Rica and train. One night while planning there was someone who commented on my status in the Globetrotters Facebook group talking about BJJ in Nicaragua and that there was this guy called Jacked Jitsu on Fb coaching in San Juan. I was leaving the next day and already planned everything from that, checked out his Fb but left it at that.

San Juan del Sur, surfing and party town.

That day I go surfing, saw this guy with a Yin&yang tattoo that looks so familiar. Came back to the hostel looked up Jacked Jitsu and what do you know that was him! Now I’m too curious and I have to stay one more night and check out his training. Shot him a pm and got an open invitation.

So next day I show up there and this super buff guy, the trainer, real name Eric, that greats me and we talk for a bit and I realise that this guy knows his stuff. The training confirmed that, he was one of the best guys I’ve seen! We rolled, he stayed passive until he apparently got bored and submitted me. These two other people join late in the training and are both black belts staying at Eric house and helping him train for the worlds. I roll with the woman, Cindy, Gracie black belt if I understood it correctly. She had such an unique style to her and it was an awesome roll. Showed me her signature sweep that I already started using in my game.

To make this long story short, that surprise training was one of the best ones I’ve done and I’m so happy that I decided to go for it! Really teaches you to grap the opportunities that come your way and don’t be to fixed in what you are doing.

ps. My phone/camera was out of battery and I was without a charger for 2 days. So I completely failed on pictures from that gym.