Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua

Small and scruffy PUERTO CABEZAS or BILWI, as it's been officially named in defiance of central governmental control (the name means "snake leaf" in the Mayangna-Sumo indigenous tongue), is the most important town north of Bluefields and south of La Ceiba in Honduras. Everyone seems to have come to this town of thirty thousand people in order to do some kind of business, whether it be a Miskito fisherman walking the streets with a day's catch of fish dangling from his hand, a lumber merchant selling planks to foreign mills, or the government surveyors working on the all-season paved road through the jungle that may one day link the town with Managua. Nevertheless, there is real potential for tourism here and there's at least one organization (AMICA) in town organizing trips to the isolated communities and beauty spots located largely to the south. Given the friendly, and in general, welcoming nature of the inhabitants, it's a potential that will hopefully be realised one day, finance notwithstanding.