Our vacation to the north

Hi everyone. We hope you are all making it through the harsh winter wherever you are. We hear that it is snowing a lot in the east and dusting in the Midwest. West coasters, I am sure you are all surviving just fine. Down here it is steadily getting hotter, much to our bewilderment. Though we have gradually acclimatized to the oppressive heat, the warmest months are yet to arrive. From what we have been told, April is a month of just trying to survive. This wet season we had little rain, which means that in a couple weeks the water will be turned off in the afternoons for several hours. We are hoping to spend a substantial amount of time during the next couple months up in the mountains. So to prepare, we took a mini-vacation last week to Matagalpa and Jinotega, both towns in the mountains.

Matagalpa has about 100,000 people in it, while Jinotega has only 50,000 people. They are both beautiful places cradled in the mountains. In Matagalpa we took a tour of a chocolate factory called El Castillo chocolate, because the Dutch guy who started it built a little castle to house the "factory." The operation is pretty small, but the chocolate produced is delicious. I was a little worried that Britsy was going to quit Green Pathways and work at the castle after smelling the sweet aromas of the cracked cocoa seeds. Fortunately my winning smile and witty charm seduced her back to Leon. We have a couple pictures of me demonstrating the seed crushing technique. Though I may not have shown much promise on the basketball court (we did win a game my senior year), I was fairly confident that my natural ability at seed breaking was going to win me a substantial job offer from the Castle. The worker next to me was giddy with surprise at my organic talent. Though she may have been 5-6 times more efficient than me, I believe my courage and care spoke for itself. If you ask Britsy she will tell you the woman was laughing at me not with me, but I am pretty sure I know when someone is laughing with me, people have been doing it all my life. Regardless, after buying probably five too many chocolate bars, one of which was 75% cocoa, we headed further into the mountains to Jinotega.

On the cusp of the cloud forest, Jinotega is the coffee mecca of Nicaragua. Here we took a coffee farm tour, watching them pick the fruits, clean them, dry them, and bag them. The farm we visited was not a tourist hotspot, so we got a lovely tour by the daughter of the farm owners. She said she was sixteen, but I am pretty sure she was 11. They were exceptionally kind and served delicious coffee.

Going a little further north, to a small town called San Rafael del Norte, we took a zipline tour in the cloud forest. Up here it was very cool and beautiful. Flying through mist enshrouded valleys was the highlight of our trip (except maybe devouring bar after bar of decadent chocolate). At one point Britsy went down one line first, and when she reached the platform and unhooked from the line, the guide told her to stand back because, "he is coming and he is out of control." When I heard this I took it as a compliment that I was pushing the envelope like only a hero would. Britsy assured me it was not meant as a compliment. Apparently it was meant that I am big and reckless. Could have fooled me. Anywho, the family run operation charged only ten dollars for something we would have paid much more. The mountains of Nicaragua are not part of the gringo trail, thus receive very few tourists. This is a shame as we have enjoyed this area the most...helped by the fact that it is so cool. But I suppose we should be grateful to get to enjoy such a gorgeous place all to ourselves...and all the people who actually live there. We have uploaded our photos from our four days there so click here and enjoy.

We hope you are all doing well and if anyone is cold remember that down here it is the "land of eternal spring" (technically that is Guatemala, but lets not get caught up in semantics), so feel free to visit.