First, note that this place is mislabeled by tripadvisor. As the other reviewer says, it's in the Indio Maiz region, on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua. The town is alternatively named Greytown, San Juan de Nicaragua, and San Juan del Norte, but where this hotel is definitely not is in San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific side. Doña Martha and Zurdo have a great little place here, and it's an amazing deal too. For just $15 a night, you can have one of the interior rooms and a típico breakfast with coffee. The rooms are basic but have plenty of space and are clean. (I stayed in both the rooms over the water and the interior rooms, and actually preferred the interior rooms. The rooms on the water are nicer but noisier due to boat traffic.) Both Martha and Zurdo are hospitable folks and will make an effort to help you feel at home. Apart from the basic breakfast, the food here is excellent, probably some of the best you'll have in Nicaragua. Fish stews, chicken dishes, plenty of vegetables, and excepting breakfast, precious little gallo pinto, for which you'll be grateful if you've stayed in Nicaragua for a while. The warnings: There is no wifi at the hotel. A German guy told me there's a computer at the library with painfully slow internet access, so it's possible to reach it. The town is served by Claro but not Movistar, so make your phone plans accordingly. I had been relying on T-Mobile roaming throughout Nicaragua but discovered there that T-Mobile only works with Movistar. There are also no ATMs in town, so you'd better bring adequate cash for everything you intend to do. Doña Martha and Zurdo only speak Spanish, and the only way to make a reservation is to call them, so you'll need to speak enough to cover the basics. But, it's a nice little place and they're great people, and if you're adventurous enough to make it to San Juan, then you'll likely love it. ******* Regarding the reserve and the guides: The summary... I am ambivalent about my experience, and I would strongly recommend against going for most people. Why? First and foremost, scabies, which I got from staying with one of the families, and am still fighting to completely kill after two weeks. Scabies are little mites burrowing into your skin that create scars and unimaginable itching, and turn you into a communicable disease vector. It is an absolute nightmare, and you do not want it. I had had it before in Africa and fortunately knew how to quickly deal with it once I got home, but nevertheless, it has taken a long time and great effort, and I'm not entirely in the clear just yet. If left untreated, they will only multiply. Second, the guide service. While I liked Hilary, and recommend him with just a few reservations, I found Solomon to be an arrogant, fat snake. While your experience may differ (clearly, since others seemed to really like him), some percentage of people will, like me, find him overbearing and offensive. By the end of the trip I just wanted to get away from him, and it was only 3 nights. The details... I contracted with Solomon as a guide into the Indio Maiz reserve, based on the positive reviews I'd seen of him here and elsewhere. I had my first misgivings about him when I called him on the phone. I asked him if he preferred Spanish or English, and he said Spanish. Ok, fine. My Spanish isn't great but it's sufficient; I made a reservation with Doña Martha over the phone that went just fine after I apologized and explained to her that I didn't speak that well. But with Solomon, over the course of about a minute, he became increasingly rude when I missed one thing that he said. He then switched to English, and was even ruder, until it became clear that I was serious and might pay him, at which point he sweetened up quite nicely. I paid Solomon $400 for a solo trip into the reserve for 3 nights. He told me that half of this would be going to the people in the reserve. I can't say for sure, but I sincerely doubt that was true, because later Hilary (the other guide) asked me how much I had paid, and when I told him, he was quite surprised at how much it was. That told me that Solomon isn't sharing information about the amount that he's collecting, even with the other guide. That seems like a bad sign to me. Though $400 may seem reasonable by Western standards for a trip like this, you have to understand where you are in the world. I negotiated some with Solomon, but agreed to this price based on what I had read from others before going - that you should expect to pay a minimum of $400 just to get in, no matter how many people you have. But $400 for one person for three nights borders on highway robbery in Nicaragua. It's more than what many people earn in two months and it's more than you could expect to pay for room and board for a month in a long-term stay, even as a gringo. So for this price, Solomon brought Hilary (who actually drove the boat) and a woman named Mary to cook for us, which, while possibly protecting me from undercooked food, reduced the authenticity of the experience, and didn't do anything to protect me from the real risk, ie, scabies. Then he proceeded to treat me throughout the trip as if I had never been in the woods before. We rode in on the boat in a pouring rain. Not much you can do about that and a frequent occurrence in this area. So we didn't see much of anything on the way in, besides the occasional iguana and bird at a distance. But generally, without a colossal zoom (300mm+) and a lot of coaching of the guides, there are few good opportunities to photograph wildlife while you're on the boat, even when you see a lot, because of the great distances and the boat movement. And there's the risk to your equipment when it's raining. We spent the first night in a house fairly deep in the reserve. The young mother was there when we arrived, along with her two sons and a baby. The baby had a cough that I could have sworn was whooping cough by its sound. After dark the husband showed up from his job, which is for an NGO that is attempting to track incursions into the reserve by campesinos and drug runners. He and another man sat up fairly late recording data from their GPS unit. The families have solar systems, so they worked by fluorescent light. While I understand the necessity of this work, none of this felt very primitive to me. I attempted to sleep in the provided hammock, but it was just too uncomfortable, so I ended up on the floor, with my backpack as a pillow. About 1:30 in the morning the roosters started crowing (from under the house, which is on stilts), and they didn't stop until dawn at 5:30, at which point everyone was up. Later that morning a white guy stopped by who is leading the NGO locally. We discussed the situation and the work they're doing. Then the guides and I went for a hike to the ruins, which appear to me to not be ruins but natural rock formations similar to Devil's Postpile in California, but with the rock formations on their side rather than vertical. Along the way Hilary showed me some medicinal plants. Both Hilary and Solomon move rather slowly. It was raining and very hard to take decent photos. Again, just an aspect of this place. When we got to the rock formations, Solomon started giving me an aggressive pitch about providing funds to protect the area that went on far too long and made me very uncomfortable. I am alone with the two of them, in the middle of the rainforest, while they have machetes and I have nothing, and he's pressing me to give them more money? I really felt as if that crossed a line, and it made me very angry, but I was too uneasy to say anything when we were in the jungle. So I just listened until he stopped talking. On Night 2 we stayed with a much larger family, six kids and a mother and father. I was given a bed to sleep in, with a foam mattress pad. If you do decide to go, and you stay with them, don't sleep in this, as I'm certain it was the source of the scabies. I woke in the morning with large itchy bites on my feet and the sensation that something had burrowed into a butt cheek. On the morning of Day 3 Solomon attempted to get out of the final night by telling me that the plane left on Sunday, so we should go, yes? I know there's a Sunday plane, I said, but I'm leaving on the following flight out, not that one. Oh, ok, he said. So we stayed in the same place on Night 3. I was given the option to move on but decided to stay since I liked the family and didn't yet suspect scabies. On Day 3 we went for another hike, this time with Brian, the husband of the second family. Brian is a nice guy. We walked to a little hut that Brian had built where there's a small cascade in a stream. This hike was fairly strenuous and both Hilary and Solomon could not keep up with Brian and me. Solomon especially had trouble. On the afternoon of Day 3 we went fishing with just some lines on spools (no rods), hooks and bait. Unfortunately there weren't enough spools for everyone. I'm a decent fisherman - I grew up doing it, from the time I was 3. But I was sharing my line with Hilary and when I missed hooking a fish a couple times, he took the line from me and didn't give it back, even when I asked. I didn't argue, since I figured Brian's family was dependent on the catch, but it still seemed childish to me. But that's really my only complaint about Hilary - otherwise he was kind and decent. Near dusk on the evening of Day 3, on the boat ride back from fishing, we saw many animals - different kinds of birds and monkeys, a crocodile, some iguanas. On Day 4 we rode out. We took a side trip in the boat but only saw a few birds and a couple howler monkeys. Evidently it was too hot to see much. When we got back, I told Hilary that I seemed to have scabies. He went to the trouble of brewing up some traditional medicine for me, a wash, a drink, and a topical application. It was very nice of him to do it and he didn't charge me much. Unfortunately it didn't work. Later Solomon visited me at the hotel, and I was candid with him about how I felt about his guiding, since at that point I felt safe to do so. There were some very interesting experiences - listening to the family talk in their Creole language, seeing what life is like in the reserve for them, going up river in a place most will never see - but for me it wasn't life changing or a window into a truly primitive life. The Rama families farm rather than hunt and gather. They have solar systems. They speak an interesting language but it's not the original Rama language. The jungle has its charms but photography is very difficult due to the humidity, and I didn't see an abundance of interesting insects and flowering plants like I have in places like Peru and Africa. And then, there's the scabies. There's also Solomon, at least for me. If you still decide to make the trip, I recommend contracting with Hilary. Hilary may still bring Solomon, but at least you will be paying Hilary's price, and enlisting him as the lead guide, which is better, in my opinion. Plus Hilary speaks better English and isn't constantly trying to convince you of something. And, if he does bring Solomon, and you like him, you can write a review telling me why I was off base about him.…