Just about any street in León leads you to the Parque de las Poetas, a small square in the middle of the Nicaraguan town that features a white statue of famed poet and native son Rubén Darío. To much of the Spanish-speaking world, Darío is known as the father of modernism who helped give birth to literary movements in Nicaragua, Spain, Chile, and Argentina. In León, he is a hometown hero, something of a patron saint.

Just a few blocks from Darío's statue, I learn of a different poet who played an indelible role in León's history. A group of law students from the local university invite me to join them at a rundown watering hole called El Roble. "It's not supposed to be open this late," says Elvis, one of the students. "The neighbours complain about the noise, so they only let in people they know."

They knock on the door and an older, squat gentleman shakes our hands as we walk through the dingy bar and into its open courtyard. As we sit on plastic lawn chairs, Elvis and his friends tell me about how, in 1956, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was assassinated in El Roble by a poet named Rigoberto López Pérez. López Pérez shot the U.S.–backed strongman point-blank as Somoza danced with a local beauty queen. The assassination set off a chain of events that saw Nicaragua endure more than three decades of dictatorships and guerrilla warfare.

Once the leading nightspot in León, El Roble is on the verge of collapse. Paint peels off the walls and parts of the roof appear ready to fall. The only part of the bar that seems to be well maintained is the large mural of López Pérez, a man who went from struggling poet to cold-blooded assassin.

For centuries the town came and went as Nicaragua's capital, depending on the whim of the governing party. Left-wing rulers would make León the capital while more conservative regimes chose the nearby city of Granada. Even after the back-and-forth ended and Managua became Nicaragua's permanent capital in 1856, León remained a leftist hotbed, often fighting against the country's brutal dictatorships and U.S. intervention.

It's been 17 years since the leftist Sandinistas and U.S.backed Contra rebels ended their struggle for control of Nicaragua, and travellers have finally returned to the Central American country. Like neighbouring Costa Rica, Nicaragua has a diverse landscape of untouched forests, white-sand beaches, and colonial architecture. In a weird way, Nicaragua's conflict during the '80s helped preserve its ecosystem by preventing major hotel and resort chains from developing properties, displacing the country's rich wildlife.

Today, León's volcanoes are one of Nicaragua's biggest draws. Several companies offer hikes up Cerro Negro, an active 400-metre volcano that last erupted in 1990. Trekkers then "volcano surf" their way down by leaning back and running down the mountain, letting their feet slide through the volcano's loose rock. Others literally surf down the volcano using modified sleighs or snowboards. The surfing is not without risks. At Vía Vía, a bar attached to a popular hostel, tables of backpackers sit around drinking Nica Libres the local version of a Cuba Libre, a mix of Nicaraguan rum and Coke and showing off various cuts, bruises, and scars they received after crashing.

León has a few scars itself. Local guide Julio Pineda takes me on a tour of the city that begins under a large mural depicting Nicaraguan history: U.S. intervention during the late 19th century, three generations of Somoza dictatorship, the rise of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and various long-running civil wars.

A couple of blocks away, Julio shows me another mural located near a playground that commemorates the student riots that took place in 1959. Just down the street lies a statue honouring four college students who were slain after the military opened fire on anti-Somoza protesters.

"Everybody here has a story," Julio tells me in slow, drawn-out Spanish. "People in León suffered as much [as] if not more than, anyone else in Nicaragua because we have always been a city of progressive thought. Talk to anyone and they will tell you they have been affected by the conflict."

As an example, Julio tells me his own story. In the 1980s, he was held prisoner during the civil war when he was just 13 years old. While he was walking home from a baseball game, Contra soldiers stopped him to ask about the welts on his arm, which he got from sliding into home plate. The soldiers thought the marks came from guerrilla training and accused him of being a Sandinista sympathizer. The teenager was thrown in jail, where he stayed for three months and was repeatedly tortured, forced to go without sleep for days at a time and sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes.

As we walk through the town, Julio waves to passersby and chats with friends. After we part ways with each of them, he tells me something about their family. One man driving a shiny new SUV lost his brother during the war, caught by stray gunfire as he was walking to school. Another amiable woman who works at a museum had her husband taken away by Contra rebels he was never heard from again. One of her sons died fighting for the Sandinista insurgency.

The town still has plenty of scars, but it also has lots of energy. A bustling college centre, it prides itself on being a place of poetry and art. While we were sitting in El Roble, students stopped by our table to hand out leaflets promoting a punk-rock concert they were putting on the following night. Others invited us to plays and poetry readings taking place on the weekend.

Enrique, one of the college students who had invited me to El Roble, admitted that he himself is something of an aspiring bard, participating in local poetry groups. I asked him how someone who is busy with law school makes time for poetry. "In the rest of Nicaragua, everybody wants to grow up to be a baseball player or a soccer player. In León, everyone wants to grow up to be a poet," Enrique said, as he faced the mural of Rigoberto López Pérez. "If there's one thing you learn growing up in León, it's that poets can change the world."

Access: León is a 90-minute, US$1.50 bus ride from Managua. For more information on León, visit www.nicaragua.com/destinations/leon/ . If you are interested in volcano surfing, visit www.bigfootadventure.com/ .