Chapter FOOD! Foods of Nicaragua

Not to interrupt the wonderful narrative flow of my blog or anything, but by popular demand, a word about Nicaraguan food:

I didn’t have very high expectations for the food here – but I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised. It probably helps having been fed by a real live Nicaraguan family, but really the food here consists of all the delicious things that I don’t get to eat at home. Including but not limited to fried cheese, fried plantains, fried beans and rice, fried various kinds of meat, deep fried potatoes mixed with cheese, deep fried tortillas, deep fried pork rinds with yucca…and other various deep fried things that I can’t think of at the moment. In a addition there is quite a lot of banana, pineapple, papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe, green mangoes, some small sour green things called hocotes, oranges, mandarins, large avocados and lots and lots and lots of cabbage along with some other root type vegetables and strange herbs. All in all it makes for some appetizing meals as long as you can balance your daily intake of deep fried things to fresh fruit.

And if you tire of these staples there is also a lot of ice-cream, sweet breads and pastries, some little baked crispy corn/cheese doughnuts called rosquilla that are very tasty, some delicious parcels of sweet mashed up congealed corn wrapped in corn husks for which the name escapes me at this moment and lots of very good coffee (both the real kind and the freeze dried powdered kind).

My favorite thing has been the thick fresh corn tortillas that got delivered to the house in Granada every afternoon. My second favorite thing is the fresh squeezed juices, my third favorite thing is the green mangoes with salt (though I wish it was proper mango season right now The best eating out/street food I had was called a paupusa which is essentially just a corn tortilla with cheese or beans or meat stuffed inside.

The family that I am staying with at the moment was quite surprised to learn that I am rather fond of gallo pinto (beans and rice – literally translated to mean “turkey beans” because the reddish color of the beans resembles the color of a turkey) and that my favorite food in Nicaragua happens to be tortillas, which the family next door happens to do a very good job of making. So corn flakes in hot milk were quickly replaced with gallo pinto, tortilla and some fried cheese, which makes a delicious but somewhat of a heavy breakfast so I’ve been hinting at a preference for some breakfast fruit this week. And a quick word of advice to travelers staying with families or even eating in a restaurant – if you try to stick to your comfort foods you are likely to get served up margarine on pretoasted wonder bread, cornflakes in a giant bowl of hot milk, or other well intentioned forms of gringo food that you wouldn’t touch with a ten food pole at home – it is usually better to go for the local stuff that is probably fresher, and more nutritious than the alternative.

Pictures of Food

Home Cooked Meals:

(basic chicken, rice, tomato soup)

Tortilla, fried meat, fried cheese, gallo pinto, and chicharone (deep fried pork rind with yucca = yuck!) - but the other stuff was great.

chicken soup with various root vegetables including yucca, sweet potato, yams and potatos - served with cornmeal/shredded chicken/peppermint dumplings - to die for!

pork topped with shredded cabbage, tomato, and lime - over a bed of boiled yucca. The bright pink drink in the background is made of corn and some kind of pink fermented paste - its sweet and very yummy


tortilla, gallo pinto, taco, topped with lime doused shredded carrots and cabbage.

Fresh tortillas - I got a quick lesson on how to make them - but its not quite the same without your own clay oven.

Street Food:
Tamale - cornmeal with pork spices and tomato sauce inside wrapped in a banana leaf - apparently this is a special dish they eat on Sundays in Granada.

(the ingredients for making paupusas - stuffed and then grilled corn tortillas - stuffings include meat, cheese or beans...very yummy

the paupusa chef in Granada on the main market street


Papas: deep fried mashed potatoes stuffed with cheese surrounded by shredded limey cabbage and a banana leaf.


The papa chef in her roadside kitchen


bus food is a whole variety of street food unto itself - people come through the bus stations and hop on and off buses with offerings of fresh fruit, soft drinks, various kinds of biscuits and buns and tortillas and things made of corn, bagged juices and of course candy.

Juice in a bag was everywhere in Nicaragua and not a bad way to serve out the vast variety of sweet fresh juices that were available due to the abundance of fruit - however it does make for a lot of garbage in the street - this one is called tamarinda made of the pulverized pulp of these little brown furry bean things that grow in a giant tree - apparently you are not supposed to drink it if you feel annoyed - I'm not sure why though.


Eating Out on Little Corn:

Fish Taco's

Best lobster meal ever - in a butter garlic chili sauce mmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

very tastey pork wrap with fries on Little Corn


Lobster on the half shell on Little Corn
Coconut french toast with fruit salad - on little corn island they made this bread that was almost like normal bread but with just a little hint of coconuttyness

The Fresh Sheet:
limey orangy fruit


mango, starfruit and hocotes drenched in lime juice


fruits at the market


garlic and preserves at the market

cashew fruit


Bananas cooking up in a solar oven just outside of Somoto

just kidding

some kind of citrus

baby avacados
raised bed veggie gardens

baby mangoes

Rosqillas


n
rosquillas the national snack of Nicaragua - they are little doughnut shaped biscuits made out of corn and cheese and some times with a little blob of caramelized sugar in the middle - incredibly tasty


Inside the rosquilla bakery in Somoto - purportedly where the best rosquillas in the country are made.

big clay oven for baking rosquillas

the rosquilla baker taking five

Chapter 7: No Hay Agua

The next day I finally got to meet Ada, who took me back out to Apatuli to hand out backpacks and uniforms to the kids from Sonya’s project. My job was to shoot photos of all the kids in their new outfits and once everyone had had their picture taken we headed back into town.

Kids gathered around to get their uniforms and backpacks.

That same morning the water had run out at the house. Everyone else on the street had been out of water for several weeks already, but Christa’s house had a cistern which kept them going a little longer. With the introduction of the water hungry tourist it probably ran out faster than they had expected. Chaos ensued that day as kids and laundry both had to be taken down to the grandparents for washing. Water in four big rusty barrels had to be trucked up the hill in a rusty truck and transferred into four rusty barrels at the house. The people in the back of the truck got soaked as we rounded corners and bounced along the rocky road. The dog decided to take a dip in one of the barrels and had to be chased out. The whole situation was very “divertida” in the words of Christa.

That evening feeling covered in dust and sweat from my excursion to Apatule the only thing I could think about was when my next shower would take place. And in fact it took place that night with a bucket full of barrel water that I hoped came out of a different barrel than the one the dog had jumped into for a quick cool down earlier that day. We finished off the very diverting day with the bottle of Flor de Cana, (Nicargua's awesomest Rum) that I bought in my first week in Nicaragua. I shared the bottle with Christa and a friend of hers that was visiting from out of town. Christa very responsibly kept our glasses full of rum and coke until the bottle was empty and as my linguistic inhibitions were knocked down everyone had a grand time making fun of my spanish mistakes - some of which turned out to be very disastrous and thus all the more entertaining - it is amazing how many lude comments can flow out of you when you don't really know what you are saying.

The next day was supposed to be an excursion to el Canyon del Somoto, however for one reason or another we never got out the door – so I spent the day working and writing and wandering a bit in town. I endured the bucket shower for two more days before I succumbed to hitting up the local gringo hotel to see if they would let me pay to use their shower – but unfortunately they had no water either – that day the whole town had no water and no power until later in the evening. So I returned home hot and and dusty still craving that feeling that only fresh running water over head can bring.


Finally, the family broke down and called the bomberros (firemen) to come and fill the cistern. So by mid day the big red water wielding truck arrived outside the house and filled the cistern and every barrel and bucket they could. “Que Divertida” Christa said to me with a laugh as the firemen got to work.

The Bomberos de Somoto outside the house

Everyone running around filling buckets and pots and pans with the fire hose

I asked how long this water would last – and they assured me that I needn’t worry because it would certainly outlast my visit. (As it turned out it did run out again on the last day of my visit - much to their chagrin I’m sure, as it cost them a small fortune to fill it in the first place –though they didn’t say a word about it. I had definitely been a conservative water user after the first catastrophe – but I did feel a bit guilty for my role in the rundown of the cistern and I wondered if they would refill again or wait for the city to turn the water back on.)

Chapter 6: Necesito Voy a Somoto

The next day, fearing the infamous treachery of Managuan taxi drivers, I took the gringo shuttle to the busy north-bound bus station in Managua and found my way to Somoto via the express bus to Ocotal, and a quick taxi ride with some very helpful locals to a gas station on the side of the highway just outside of Somoto. Somoto is a relatively untouristed town in the north of Nicaragua about half an hour from the Honduran border. I went there to volunteer for a non-profit project set up by a friend of mine named Sonya who had lived there for three years with her husband doing development work in the communities. She connected me with a local woman named Ada that runs the project who had tasked her son, Arol, with delivering me to my home stay family. Arol met me at the gas station we got in another taxi that took us a few blocks to a little second hand clothing store where I was greeted by an older man with a very round belly and a young woman named Christabell who informed me that I was early and asked me to sit down.

(bus station in Managua - this lady is selling snacks for the ride)

(on the road to Somoto - the landscape got drier and hillier as we went north)

With my Spanish slightly out of practice from talking in English to other gringos for the previous week, I managed to understand that this was the house of Christabell’s parents, but that I would be living “ariba” (above) at the house of Christabell and her family and that we would go there later, because I wasn’t supposed to arrive until five. So, I hung out at the store trying to talk to people in broken Spanish, and drinking a nice cup of coffee with some various biscuits. I soon found out that “ariba” meant at the top of a very steep and rocky hill, in a house with an amazingly beautiful view, a large dog, two 10ish year old children and Christa’s husband Geraldo. They got me settled in my room – which was actually their room, and which wasn’t ready on account of my being early, and I got myself showered and clean of all the dirt that one acquires on a long bus journey with open windows.

Christi then informed me that I would be going back down the hill to meet Raphaela the woman who was going to take me the next day out to the communities where the project was working. I got down the hill on the back of a motorcycle, fearing for my helmetless head as we traversed the many boulders and potholes that made up this as yet unpaved road. It turned out Raphaela wasn’t at the store so we went back up the hill on the motorbike, and luckily my head remained intact. It is standard practice for motorbike passengers to not wear helmets around here, usually, but not always, the drivers do – and that was my first and last ride up the hill.

The next day I opted to walk rather than take my chances on the bumpy motorbike ride - I met Raphaela a 60 something year old smartly dressed woman who took me off in a taxi to the first community called Appatule. We were met there by a group of women who had been beneficiaries of the kitchen garden program associated with Sonya’s project – they all introduced themselves and expressed their appreciation for their gardens and the project and for the work Sonya had done in the community. From there we looked around one garden after another, along a long dirt road, in the near equatorial heat of the day - being barked at by dogs, and dodging cows and chickens and various animals along the way.

(meeting of all the participants in the Patio Project - they all talked about how they benefited from the project)

(Raphaela my tireless guide (in red) and some of the ladies from the community showing me their garden)

Our final stop was a parcel of land that had been planted with all manner of fruit trees including mangos, papayas, oranges, lemons, avocados, passion fruit, marones and other fruits and veg and medicinal plants. The marone trees were in bloom and our guide, the 23 year old daughter of the family that owned the land, kindly gave me a few marones to try (which I later learned were actually cashew fruits). They were incredibly juicy and tart and delicious – and they had something in that made your mouth feel dry despite being inundated with the most juice I’ve ever seen come out of a piece of fruit. I don’t think I’ll ever get to try those again unless I go back to the tropics, so I will just have to remember the taste until then. We were fed some beans and tortilla by the homeowners and gradually made our way back to the road.

(just one of many many many chickens I met on my travels)

(cashew - the red part is the fruit and the dark green nobby bit sticking out of the end is where the cashew nut lives - who knew!)

The next day Raphaela took me out to another community called Uniles, which is where she is from – we visited a number of homes and more gardens, most of which belonged to various relatives of hers, including her very elderly mother. Sonya’s name was like gold in both these communities, and anywhere that Raphaela mentioned my connection to her we were greeted with warm smiles and hugs and coffee.

(Raphaela's mother's patio garden in Uniles)

We did a lot of walking in the hot sun, which was hard work for me, but the challenge of this exertion, made it all the more amazing to see women carrying buckets of water on their heads for miles because the area is just so dry. One woman told me that it hadn’t rained there for over a year. There were mountains of dust that blew up in the breeze, and, like everywhere else in Nicaragua, there was garbage everywhere in the roads, and pathways, and in the stream beds, and on people’s property. This is a major problem because many of the kids don’t have proper shoes – and when they are running around in flip flops where there are old razors tossed in the street among other things, there are going to be injuries.

Chapter 5: Two nights at the Laguna

Laguna de Appoyo is a tidy little paradise in the midst of a beautiful but chaotic and rather untidy country. It is a crystal clear sulphoros lake tucked neatly into the crater of a dormant (at least I think dormant) volcano. I checked into the open air laguna-view dorm room, and immediately went for a quick swim in the cool but not too cool water. It was the perfect way to recover from a long day of traveling – and the perfect place to relax and do nothing but work and eat and swim. I spent the first night alone in the dorm which was at once wonderful and nerve wracking.

(the dorm)

There is no such thing as a peaceful night in Nicaragua – and I had traded the noise of the city for the noise of the jungle, cicadas, monkeys and all manner of disembodied sound – all of which was separated from me only by the metal grill that was the front wall of the dorm room. Luckily (and annoyingly) I also had a night watchmen dutifully pacing past my room every half hour or so setting off all the motion sensor lights outside the dorm – I wished I had chosen a bed at the back of the room – the next night I gained a few room-mates including a perpetually traveling yoga addict from the states, and two girls from Switzerland – the same day a bevy of other very cool and interesting people arrived at the hostel which made for some great evening conversation and an excellent swim in the dark in the laguna.It was a very awesome night – and needless to say, night swimming in volcanic lagoons has now been added to my top ten list of favorite things to do.

(sunrise over the laguna and the floating dock silhouetted to the right)

(painting of the laguna)

After two nights at the Laguna I headed back for a night of poetry festivaling in Granada – finally got to fix myself a meal – which consisted of a giant avocado doused in lime and two paupusas that I bought from my favorite Granadense eatery.

Chapter 4: Only in Ometepe

Yesterday I set out from Granada for Islia de Ometepe. In what turned out to be an 8 hour journey – in which 90% of the distance was covered in 50% of the time, and the final 10 kilometers took 2.5 hours. I didn’t really know what to expect from Ometepe other than reading that it is Nicaragua’s crown jewel and that it is a must place to visit with farms and volcanoes. The island itself is made up of two volcanoes, one active and one dormant and both of which are climbable if you are in the mood for a gruleling several hour long hike in near equatorial heat. Having heard several harrowing accounts of peoples attempted or successful climbs I decided I wasn’t in the mood so I left my hiking boots in Granada so as not to be tempted by the challenge.

After a two and a half hour bus ride from Granada sitting in front of a big white goose who made its presence known with a loud and jarring squak about half way through the trip, I arrived in Rivas and split a cab with a French couple to the doc about five minutes away. We had to wait an hour for the ferry to arrive so I ordered some gallo pinto (beans and rice) which I didn’t eat because it appeared to be about three days old and very questionable from a digestive system defensive perspective. I spent most of the ferry ride on the top deck in the sun – and got my first proper sun burn of the trip.

(on the bus from Granada to Rivas en route to Ometepe - the goose was behind me but I didn't get a good pic )

We landed at Moyagalpa and went for a drink in a little restaurant while we waited for the 4:30 bus to Mireda on the other side of the island. The bus filled up and off we went for drive across the island with a view of volcano conception looming overhead glowing in the setting sun –with the exception of having to arrive at the hostel in the dark, I was very glad I opted for the three hour bus ride over the one hour cab ride. The drive was slow and pretty and cool and breezy and the scenery was amazing. Aside from the fact that I couldn’t fit my legs into the seat of the antique school bus it was one of my favorite bus rides ever. Even the bumpy portion of the ride over a rough dirt road was pleasant.

(on the road on Ometepe - they evacuated the island at least twice while I was in Nicaragua due to the volcano acting up)

I was less than impressed with the hostel we had chosen – at night in the glow of too many fluorescent lights it seemed cramped and dingy. The shower didn’t drain and the sheets were not exactly clean. There were no mosquito nets in the dorm room and the air smelled of burning garbage. I hastily strung up my mosquito net, registered for a dorm bed, ate a quick dinner did some star gazing. The view of the stars here is amazing and alone worth the trip far from any light pollution. I have never seen so many stars in the sky in my life. Then I went off to bed for a sleepless night on the top bunk of a wobbly bunk bed in a smoking hot dormitory.

At about 6 am I woke up = or rather stopped trying to sleep, and wandered out in to the cool morning tried a different shower stall that was quite luxurious, had an excellent breakfast buffet and tried to decide what to do with my day. In the end after much debated I decided not to hike anywhere, and not to move to another part of the island, and not to go kayaking, so I spent the day writing and making travel plans and generally relaxing. I took a walk with a group of volunteers staying at the hostel along some dirt roads and down to a pretty little beach with a rustic restaurant/hotel and played a game of cards. I walked back to the hostel alone with some slight trepidation passing dozens of chickens pigs and horses along the way.

The island really is beautiful – I didn’t have to climb a volcano to see that – and since I am leaving first thing in the morning I will just have to content myself with having seen some beautiful rural landscapes. I can always come back and Kayak another day if I don’t find anything I like better. I really have to work on this decision making thing because if I had known I was going to spend the whole day doing nothing I would have done a whole lot more nothing and a whole lot less trying to decide what to do.

(a sunny relaxing evening at the hostel in Ometepe)

So, having decided to save myself half a day of travel I had my self booked on to the “fast speedboat” that would get me to the ferry terminal and off the island by seven in the morning with a couple of outdoor adventure guides and a British girl who was going home a week early on account of having fallen off a horse and probably breaking her arm. After not sleeping for the previous two hours for fear of missing my boat – I was properly awoken at five am by my trusty alarm watch. I packed up all my things and jumped off of my top bunk dorm bed with a bit more creaking and shuffling than my dorm-mates probably wanted to hear at that hour, and I was ready for my 5:55 fast speed boat ride.

The fast speed boat was very fast and very small to boot, which allowed for a generous, refreshing and fairly constant spray of Lake Nicaragua as we bounced along on the giant waves (giant only because the fast speedboat was so tiny). As I looked down to assess the degree of water damage to the left side of my body, I miraculously discovered a tiny tick just getting itself settled in my arm – this, and my ensuing attempts to remove said tick from arm, was enough to divert my attention away from the horizon long enough to initiate the much dreaded sea sickness that has plagued me on many a foreign boat ride in my various travels. This was not a good thing considering that I had a long day of traveling ahead of me and I really did not need to company of a stubborn case of motion sickness.

Twenty minutes later we arrived at the ferry dock disembarked from our tiny fast speed boat onto a large rickety other boat – from whence we had to balance across a tiny and equally rickety looking plank onto the nice solid concrete dock, from whence we immediately boarded our ferry, and waited for an hour to be on our way. While we were waiting we enjoyed a nice cup of instant coffee, some stale bread and the company of the resident ferry-kitten.

Me and the British girl with the broken arm found ourselves a nice shady seat dead centre on the top deck of the small ferry –would have been the perfect place for sea sickness prevention if the boat was not listing excessively from side to side in the ocean-like surf of this giant lake. But thankfully it did not rock the whole time and I made it to the mainland without having thrown up. Then, took a taxi to the bus station in Rivas, took a Managua bound bus to the cross road near Granada, took a tiny open air taxi-type vehicle to Granada, wandered around for a few hours, collected my yoga mat and some other essentials from my luggage stored at the Hospidaje there, ate a paupusa and a grapefruit and jumped on the shuttle bus to Laguna de Appoyo for my three day working holiday retreat.

(Top deck of the ferry - leaving Ometepe)

(bus stop in Rivas - 90% of the Bus system works on these old american school busses - kind of fun to ride around on - and open windows beat mouldy air conditioning systems in my book even in 40 degree heat...)