Getting Around Ometepe
If I had to explain in one word why we absolutely plan on visiting Nicaragua again, that word would be “Ometepe”. The first time I saw it in our itinerary, I thought it sounded spiritual and mysterious, with a note of an ancient ceremony, and a hint of volcanic eruptions. […]
The Coffee Robbery of the Century
If you order a cup of Nicaraguan coffee in your town, there is a good chance that the beans used in preparing your drink will be from one of the fincas around Jinotega or Matagalpa. After all, this is a premier region for the renowned and much-sought shade-grown Nicaraguan coffee. […]
The Shadowy Business of Nicaraguan Coffee
On our second day at El Soccorro, at breakfast, we planned to ask our host, Edgar, if he could give us a coffee tour of his finca or recommend any other coffee tours in the area. But it turned out, we did not even have to ask. Edgar was super […]
Coffee: In Love and War
Several years ago, a coffee shop by my office had seasonal Nicaraguan coffee beans for sale. Coffee bags with big letters NICARAGUA had an image of a man in a blue shirt holding a basket of ripe coffee cherries. The name of the coffee was “Don Zeledon”, and the coffee […]
Somoto Canyon: The River Runs Through It
Start with Part I here In the last post, I left off just as we just reached the bottom of the Somoto Canyon and, incidentally, the Nicaraguan border with Honduras. As it turns out, the Rio Coco River which runs through Somoto Canyon divides Hondurans and Nicaragua along most of […]
Somoto Canyon: The What, the Why, and the How
We were eating breakfast in our Granada Airbnb, the standard affair of rice, beans, eggs, and plantains, when Victor loudly snickered and put down the book he had been leafing through. It was an old torn-up Nicaraguan guidebook he found on the bookshelf among poetry books by Ruben Dario and […]
