Street Food in Nicaragua

The food here in Nica has been on a different carnivorean level than in Guatemala, or Honduras for that matter. I think that partially due to this the people here are much bigger here in Nica than in Honduras or especially Guate. This leads to all sorts of fights on the bus when people are asked to sit three to a seat to the point where I've seen the ayudante getting his fists ready. Back to the food - everything you order here comes with two or three huge pieces of pork, chicken or beef (occasionally lamb if it is the right area) and green cabbage salad. Then there are soups and tamale type things and delicious fried fish at the beach. This isn't to say that you can't be a happy vegetarian here in Nica because you can. The mangoes are ripe and we are definitely in the tropics now and they everything from carambola to mamey, to coco, plantain and a whole bunch of melon like things I that I don't know how to call them. Everyone sells refrescos, which are like juices with some sugar and the gallo pinto is enough meal for two (gallo pinto equals rice and beans together. Below are some of my favorite street dishes from Nica.


The first is a nacatamale. It is basically the same as a mexican tamale but it is soft. They fill it with corn or potato and chicken or pork or beef. You put some pica and vinegar onions on the top and it is ready to go. They cook it overnight to give the tamale that sort of gelatinous jellyfish look, at least I think that is what they are going for.


This is what they call vigorron and it is close to a national dish here. They get a bunch of mashed yucca, put cabbage salad on top and then cover it in pork skins and hot sauce. Yeah, and those are like pickled sweet peppers you see sticking out of the cabbage. They usually give a piece of real crackle like skin and then something a little softer with meat and fat in it. Not much else to say...I'll just let you enjoy the picture.


This one is called baho and I did not enjoy myself. When it was served to me instead of meat I got about six ounces of fat. The kid who served it even told me that it was fat but I thought he meant like this is delicious because we give you some fat with your meat. I mean, who doesn't like a little beef fat in their meal. They also have plantains and yucca and serve it with salad. They wrap it in a little plastic bag and you kind of slurp your bajo while hoping to not get it down the front of your shirt. It boils for hours and I wish it would have been better because it looks like it could be superb.


This last is the beef soup. I've found everywhere you go people say the soup is the special dish, the best dish, the one to try. Seeing that it is hard to muck up something you cook for 8-12 hours (the exception being baho) I usually find they are right. In this case the soup was great but the meat was 90 percent gristle and tendon. I felt like I was eating pho but I didn't order the tendon and it wasn't sliced so it was chewable. But check the spoon, way more useful than a normal spoon for cutting and eating soup. I think it is an old dried gourd.


Lastly, these are the fish we spearfished down in San Juan del Sur. Went out for snapper, came back with snapper. Snapper is in the middle and the left is a grunt and to the right is a juvenille hogfish.

First day in Nica

#lake at Jinodega

So I was awoken at 6 this morning by a man throwing buckets of water on the already clean patio. He proceeded to scrub and clean for the next hour at which time I finally made my way to the bathroom to a cold shower and a quick butt scrub and armpit rub. The Germans I had met were sitting on their bed twiddling their thumbs when I headaed back to my room and basically threw half of a pineapple at me that I promptly devoured along with two advil to combat the continual stuffed face I´ve had since I got to Nica.

After being locked int the hotel for about half an hour (I think dude had to go buy cigarettes or something) we made our way to the bus, they to head to selba negra, and I was on my way to Jinodega and fresh perch and tilapia at Lago Apanas. We waved goodbye at the decrepit long lost US tank that marks the entrance to selba negra and an hour later I was in Jinodega, the cowboyiest of cowboy towns. After waving goodbye to my two new Nicaraguan friends, that competed for my attention by trying to speak the best Englishthat they could ..one of them a preacher and one of them stinking drunk..I walked the town and then spotted a cross up on the hill. Having nothing better to do and not wanting to fish quite yet I laboured my sick ass for 45 minutes up the hill. Way harder than I thought and I wish you could have been there to make fun of me. At the top I was rewared with views of the whole mountain range of Nica all the way the Honduras and back. The cross was covered in grafitti and teh clouds rolled over the hills and into the valley towards the lake that was stretched out to the north sandwiched between the hills that circumscribed Jinodega.
#cross at Jinodega

I stayed for maybe half and hour and recovered my breath and then it was off to the lake, or so I thought. I bought some cow liver at the grossest meat market I have yet seen and then got on the bus to La Laguna. After an hour and out of view of the lake, I asked the nice lady next to me where La Laguna was and if I could fish there. She said, no you can´t fish there and it is a village in the mountains. I hopped off the bus, properly shamed in my spanish (Cual bus al lago es correcto no cual bus a la laguna), and headed an hour back to town and caught the right bus to the lake. 40 minutes later I was a twenty minute walk to the lake. On my way a couple people kinda smiled at me and said, sure you can fish, if you want. At the lakeshore a man was heading home and said, just wade in up to your hips and cast. I arrived at the lake with this image in my head and what am I confronted with but a marsh that extends maybe a hundred yards. I finally make it to the lakeshore to see that all the plants that line the shore are covered in thorns and that mosquitoes are swarming around my ankles. I took a quick look, opend my bag of liver, threw it on the ground and turned around and headed for home. I thought to myself that effort was enough.
#unfishable lake
A half hour into what was an hour walk back to the road, no buses at this time, I was chased by two drunk nicaraguans on a horse who either wanted me to buy them cococola or buy the belt they were whipping the horse with. I think they would have been happy with either. Once safe back in town I bought myself an enchilada and promptly ran smack into two gringos from Buffalo that worked on their Aunts organic farm up in the hills. We talked for a minute about this and that, it gave me a chance to eat my enchilada while standing and not walking, we said our goodbyes. I hopped on the bus to matagalpa and was rewarded with an amazing sunset that lit up four sets on mountains that led to the ocean (not visible).

A great way to celebrate my first day of semi'unsickness, full of walking adventure and the cowboys and lakes of Northern Nica.

#cigar factory in Esteli and the fat lady of Esteli

Old pictures to update

Kathleen: About a month ago, half of my post on Lago Atitlan mysteriously disappeared. The trauma of that happening has worn off, and I´m uploading the pictures again... with brief descriptions.

First, here is a picture of the bed bug or flea attack that happened to me my last week in Xela. OMG. It was horrible. Luckily, since Xela, I have not been plagued by these miserable creatures!

We arrived in San Pedro de Laguna, on the shores of Lago Atitlan, the day before Tait´s 30th birthday, and found a great hotel for $6 a night, including a private bathroom (although you could literally sit on the toilet and shower at the same time). Here is a picture of Tait on his 30th... notice the interesting decorative decisions made by the hotel owners... Also, a picture of the view from our hotel room.


To celebrate, we took a boat around the lake. Here are some pictures...


I´ve written about the Guatemalan enchiladas before, but San Pedro had the most amazing EVER... the first layer was half beans, half guacamole; a layer of beet salad and pasta salad on top of that; then a layor of carrot salad; then a slice of hard boiled egg, some onion, some tomato salsa, some cheese, and hot sauce to taste. A vegetarian delight!!

We took a long walk out to a beach near San Pedro every day... here are pictures of two things I had never seen before... coffee beans on the tree, and orange bouganvilla (I had only seen the pink kind).


Finally, two nights at Lake Atitlan we splurged and stayed at this absolutely lovely hotel, with amazing views of the lake and its volcanos. They had a family style meal for all the guests each night, with meat and vegetarian options, hot showers with wonderful water pressure, and peace and quiet. Here are some shots of the hotel and its views.




Unfortunately... the lake was plagued by disgusting algae when we were there. It´s actually quite a tragedy... they think that the algae is caused by all the raw sewage going into the lake



SO... That´s the rest of the Lago Atitlan story.

Out of Honduras and back to Guate

*sunset on the Cayes
So we are done with Honduras, and to my mind a bit too soon. We finished our SCUBA diving course after 5 nights at on the Cayes and then it was time to go. Captain Morgan´s was renting out Sandy Caye (your own private Island for 125 bucks a night...pretty sweet) but we needed to jet up to Antigua to get our passport stamped for an extended Visa. Ended up getting it stamped at the border in some sort of shady, you give us la mordida we´ll give you the stamp sort of thing, but it saved us a trip to Guate city and let us get to Antigua quicker than expected.

But before the story of our trip to Guate, fun and long, let me just say that the SCUBA is da bomb. We saw barrel sponges the size of me, grouper that must have weighed 200 pounds, little puffer fish that waved their fins like hummingbirds and another thousand things that I didn´t recognize. I actually didn´t think that I would be that into it, loving snorkelling like I do, but there is something ridiculously cool about being below the water for an hour and swimming with the fishes. Moray eels were below us, we were at the bottom of sea walls, barracuda stared us down and parrot fish shat coral into our eyes. All worth it, all awesome. And the other thing is these SCUBA instructors are crazy, just a little nuts like serious cyclists or spelunkers or other sports that require something to be a bit off up top. The other cool part about staying in the Cayes and our SCUBA experience, is everyone on the Cayes are descneded from Pirates...that´s right PIRATES, like the actual Captain Morgan. There are 6 names that nearly every white person shares. They just got left there hundreds of years ago and now let me tell you, things are a bit strange out there. One street, everyone is related, got their own English and their own Spanish but friendly, welcoming and way more chill than Utila.


*dock where we could snorkel, fooling around on water caye where there are picnic tables and camping available, and lastly sunset on water caye

Speaking of Utila, go to the Wooden Spoon when you are there. They serve a veg option and a meat option and it is straight out delicious pub food but like elevated to this incredible level of warmth and goodness by the staff and their cook. I mean seriously, go to Utila just to eat at this place. Other great food memories of Honduras include baleadas, fried fish and the hamburger on Utila that was the size of a normal burger and not deep fried. First good burger I´ve had in months. Below are some pictures of the Honduran food...


*coco bread from Triunfo de la cruz with organic Belizean peanut butter from el Remate and shrimp ceviche the size of a desk

Other things we did while in Honduras, not including the SCUBA, were hike in Pico Bonito, a beautiful national park near La Ceiba. Kath had a friend from high school who was directing a project up there so we stayed with a family that he knew for a day and then spent the next night on the mountain. I was able to fish for the first time and get some use out of my Honduran fishing rod - it is basically a club wrapped in line with a hook and a weight at the end. I was thoroughly outfished by the kids I was with but enjoyed the Rio Cangrejal. We caught freshwater shrimp to use as bait and these little creepy crawlies that looked like they were out of Lord of the Rings. The only disappointing part was the boys kept their fish which measured in at a good 2-3 inches.


*me and the outstanding fisherman of the group and the kid putting freshwater shrimp on the hook

Now we are back in Antigua, a much more pleasant place the second time around. We ran into an old friend and spent the evening shooting the shit and drinking beer. Memories of Honduras are big people (fat and tall like the USofA), an old man telling me the problem with the States was that we had elected a niggar, baleadas from a lady as wide as she was tall that kept me filled for the day, the best hangover food I´ve ever had - fried plantains covered in gravy and pickled cabbage with a piece of fried chicken to top it off, the Cayes and Utila, a place I could go back to, hiking Pico Bonito and spending the night with the Mosquitoes, 3 eagle rays flying through the water and interminable bus rides through landscapes dramatic and varied, stuck together with clay, nothing grand nothing long and all of it right there to be seen and had.



*68 meter waterfall in Pico Bonito, smaller waterfall on the hike, Kath leaving at 6 in the morning on the suspension bridge that leads to the park