NICARAGUA JANUARY 2008
Danny O’Neill, David Hermann, Norm.


JANUARY 28th, WEDNESDAY
We leave early in the morning and arrive in Houston on time. The plane to Managua is half empty (half full?) so everyone gets to stretch out. I sit beside a lady from Southern California, or so she says, who is going to visit her son for his birthday. A rather rotund lady but well heeled I asked her how her son came to live in Nicaragua and she was very vague saying only that she had other relatives living there also including a daughter. For what ever reason she just did not want to talk about it which made me think her son was on the lamb from the law or hiding out from the mob. She had trouble filling out the required forms so I helped her; she was very concerned about being questioned by immigration. She did not know her sons address (humm) so I told her to put her destination as Intercontinental Hotel. I told her to let me go first and if they didn’t put me against the wall and shoot me we probably filled the forms out right and it would be safe for her. She was met at the airport not by her son whom she hadn’t seen in six years but by a man holding a sign saying “Mama Lulu”.
Chino from Nature’s Best Coffee in Costa Rica our host is waiting for us at the car rental booth talking to a pretty lady and we take a short ride to the Hertz lot where we will get our SUV which turns out to be a Ford, made in Thailand, being rented in Nicaragua and driven by a Costa Rican with some gringo’s thrown in. We stop to eat before we head out of the city at a restaurant called Churasco, the food is excellent. When we leave the restaurant Chino makes a right turn crossing over into the third lane and is stopped by a policeman, the correct maneuver is to turn into the first (closest) lane and then move into the other lanes. As Chino gets out I suggest he drop Mama Lulu’s name but it does no good, no ticket is issued but it takes a ten spot to solve the problem. We now head out of the city toward the town on Ocotal three hours to the North in the region of Las Segovia’s. We pass a large warehouse marked Cisa a company which exports thirty per cent of the Nicaragua harvest and another marked Ecom (Atlantic). We are traveling the Pan American highway which is an excellent road, standing by the road are people selling parrots and iguanas, lots of horse drawn carts. The town of Sebaco appears which is the heart of the rice growing region in Nicaragua and shortly after we start climbing into the mountains. Coffee is grown in the North of the country on the Pacific and the Atlantic sides, the best ones are on the Pacific side. Last year 20% of the coffee crop was not picked due to low prices and lack of people to pick the harvest, as people migrate to the cities the rural population continues to thin. The break even point in Nicaragua is 85 cents a pound; if a farmer can not make that it isn’t worth picking. We now cross a plateau and pass through the town of Estelí, this is the tobacco growing region, Nicaragua is considered second only to Cuba in the quality of it’s cigars according to the Nicaraguans. We stop at a Texaco to get refreshments and I buy a bag of coffee flavored marshmallows, I eat a couple and give the rest of the bag to a couple of boys who seem most thankful, as we pull away from the station they hold the bag up and wave. The long drive passes quickly and soon we are in Ocatel to visit Benifico La Florencia which we are told is all about tradition. We enter the gates and before us are the large drying patios full of coffee drying in the sun, a truck is being unloaded by hand and the bags are stacked on pallets. This coffee is from farms the mill has contracted with and it still retains 45% moisture; much of the coffee on the patios is wet to the touch and has a fermented aroma. We enter the mill and see the coffee bags stacked up, the mechanical dryers, the Oliver machines, the electronic sorters, the usual suspects of any dry mill. We cross the street and here are more drying patios of micro lot coffees, some as small as two bags. Overlooking the patios is the cupping room and where we meet Isabella who is the manager of the mill, the room is small with a two barrel J.B. Burns sample roaster and a Probat grinder; large glass windows overlook the patio. It is getting dark and we next go to a receiving station which is located along a very busy road. These coffees are from farms the mill does not have a contractual relationship with; many times farmers will bring two or three bags of coffees on the bus which stops across the street and sell it to this receiving station. It is very dark now and we can barely see the coffee spread out on plastic tarp and being raked to bring the moisture down to 45% then it will go to the mill for final drying. We have had a full day and go to the Hotel Frontera which is very nice and clean.
January 29th
Up early to a rooster crowing, a road island red me thinks. We have a balcony out the back of our room and across the alley we can see the daily activity of the home owners. For the two days we stayed here their routine was the same. Directly across from our room a young man polishes his taxi. He wipes it down inside and out. He has a stick that holds the trunk open and he even polishes that. At the home to the left a gentleman comes out each day and washes off his stoop and then wets down the dirt in the alley in an attempt to limit the dust. On the home to the right where the rooster lives a woman comes out each morning and gathers firewood that is stacked against the fence. A man passes below with a bike on which is a shovel, he works at a digging project at the end of the alley. Many other residents use the alley on their way to work, each one I wave at waves back.
We eat breakfast at the hotel and then have a short revisit at the mill. David rakes some coffee on the patio and we kid him that it will have to be sold at half price. One bird lands on the coffee something I have rarely seen but there are lots of butterflies on the drying patio.
We are now climbing out of the city. The crop this year is estimated at 2,000,000 forty six kilo bags which is a large crop, seventy percent of it grows in this region. Natures Best deals with twenty five main produces some of whom we will visit today and tomorrow. The large exporters finance the producers and then take a large percent of their crop which means the producers are at the mercy of the exporters, Natures Best is trying to break this cycle by purchasing the coffee outright instead of a percentage. We turn off the main highway and begin climbing up the mountain on a dirt road that gets narrower the further we go. We pass small villages and standing in the middle of nowhere are two military guards protecting the border of Nicaragua and Honduras against what I am not sure.
There has been rain here recently and we descend a steep muddy dirt road and arrive at Finca Organica Santa Priscas which is (almost) organic but not certified organic. We pull up in front of a modest farm house and are greeted by the owner and his lovely wife. The farm has 6.5 hectares which is quite large for this region; they have electricity but no running water in the house. We are invited to walk through the house, the children are watching a soccer game on television, their cooking stove is wood fired and some delicious smells waft from a pan that is being stirred. We exit out the back door and see a large compost pile and some concrete tanks that have compost in them also; chickens are running around, clothes are hanging on the line. They have a drum coffee roaster that is fueled by a wood fire underneath; it takes forty minutes to roast a batch while someone turns the drum by hand. Next we visit the mill which is very rudimentary and walk into the coffee fields, the whole operation is rustic, and the trees look stressed. The farmer said he could not afford fertilizer but used the pulp from the compost piles to bring nutrients to the trees but once in a while he has to use pesticides; if he did go organic he said it would cost him 500 dollars a year for inspection something he cannot afford and he had no idea how he would combat the bugs if he couldn’t use pesticides. Coffee is processed using the wet process and stays in the ferment tanks from twelve to eighteen hours depending on the temperature; the colder it is the longer it takes. Then it is sold to a mill where the coffee goes to the drying patio to bring the moisture down to 12%, coffee leaves the farm with a moisture level of 45%. I sit on the porch in a rocking chair and the children bring me a fruit drink, the birds are singing and the flowers fill the air with there fragrance.
The name Nicaragua comes from a native tribe called the Nicarao, it is the largest country in Central America and one of the poorest. All of the farms in Nicaragua were seized by the Sandinista government in the 1980’s and the land was redistributed to poor people who had limited means or skills to make them successful, those land owners who could afford it left Nicaragua. In the unexpected defeat of the Sandinistas in the elections of 1990 and the election of Violeta Chamorro as President the land was returned to the rightful owners, many who had left the country came back but just as many did not. As we get ready to leave the farmer hands each of us a bag with ground coffee in it, he says he knows it is not very good but he wanted us to have a gift, his generosity in having us for a visit was gift enough. We start back up the steep muddy hill and Chino says “I’m so good at driving on these roads” and at the exact same instant we hit a large hole and he hits his head hard against the roof of the vehicle, needless to say it gets a big laugh. We have crossed over into Honduras and as we go down a long muddy hill and below us there are large trucks waiting at the border to pass into Nicaragua. Because of Chino’s smiles and my boyish good looks we are able to go around the trucks and pass back into Nicaragua with ease. Back in Ocotal we eat at La Cabana Cabana, the food is excellent, the ice tea served with a lot of sugar. Danny gives Chino a stress test that stresses him out. The conversation turns to the specialty market in Costa Rica. When the market was low specialty roasters (like the Roasterie) in the United States paid fair prices for the coffee, now that the market is up roasters feel the farmers should make some concessions, the farmers think the coffee prices ought to track upward with the market, in many ways they are biting the hand that fed them, that’s why relationships with the farmers is so important, getting beyond the markets. Back to the hotel and a good nights sleep.

January 30th
Up early. Our neighbors out the back are about the same task they were doing yesterday, the air is fresh and the wind is bringing sweet smells to start the day. We have breakfast at the hotel and seated at the next table are some familiar faces from Stumptown in Portland, what a small world. We start out of the city, passing through the towns of Sumoto, San Lucas and Las Savanas and soon arrive at the Finca Los Hielgueros which is at 1400 meters (4500 feet); they have 15 hectares in coffee. We go to visit the fields and I ride with Henry the jovial owner in an old safari type Toyota that likely will be in service forty years from now, you can’t kill these vehicles. The passenger side door will not latch and Henry wires it shut but within a half a mile it flies open and I almost fall out which we all laugh about but I can hold it shut and it works find. We pull up in front of the field and hike through the coffee fields grown under shade, Henry telling us it takes three passes through the field by the pickers to bring all the harvest in. He shows us a stump that has been grafted three times in forty years, next time they will start with a new seedling, it can’t be grafted successfully again. They fertilize two times a year and use a pesticide to combat leaf rust a big problem in Nicaragua. He treats us to sweet lemons growing in amongst the coffee, very sweet; I didn’t know there was such a thing. Back in the vehicles to visit the mill which turns out to be a rustic farm house with a simple processing facility run by a gentleman and his family. The beautiful children hide from us being very shy as we try to snap photos.
Next we visit Finca Campormor mill which is more modern. We enter the main building which is well built with a bedroom and indoor plumbing and are served cookies and juice. The mill out the back has a receiving station and ferment tanks. The farmer says if we want he can call for some coffee to be brought from the farm and we can see how it is processed which we eagerly agree to. We now set around discussing the coffee world, relaxing under the canopy that covers the receiving station, feeding the dogs cookies and watching the chickens pecking at the dirt, we look like characters out of Hee Haw. The trees here look more healthy and the farmer says the shade trees over the coffee allows them to use less fertilizer a big help as those cost have increased dramatically recently as petroleum cost have went up. Finally the coffee arrives, it is carried up steps and placed in a holding bin and gravity fed into the de-pulper then drop on screens below where two gentlemen work the beans with there hands cleaning it even more. So much labor involved to bring coffee to the consuming nations of the world.
We head back to the hotel and dinner. I kid Chino about taking us somewhere us for dinner and he says that menu’s are all the same in Nicaragua, same food everywhere they just put a different restaurant name at the top. When we get back to the room Danny calls to say 007 (From Russia with Love) is on channel 21, we watch a bit but then go to sleep.

January 31st
The rooster crows and I am up early. I go out on the balcony and there are my friends doing their morning routine, the distant mountains shrouded in fog. We head to the mill where today we will cup some of coffees from the farms we visited along with some others. The young man who will do the preparation of the samples starts by picking out the defects in the green coffee which means he is improving the cup quality. Next he starts to roast the samples which he does darker than what we do at the Roasterie. After roasting he grinds the samples which create a coarser grind than if allowed to set for a while to make sure all the heat is out of the beans. Next he pours the water but not all the way full. Instead we do the initial break and then he fills the cup to the top, all of this much different than we do. There are eight cups four of which are marked with an M and four marked with an R. M4 and R4 are the best of this group, being blinding bright, sweet and fruity.
We kill time while the second set of eight cups is prepared. In the second set one cup is marked 007 and is the best, the best of all the coffees we cupped. Next we cup our top three again and they get ranked 007 as the best, then R4 and M4. Is it coincidence that there was a James Bond movie on television last night? We have cupped all morning and finish at 12:40 in time for lunch. As we get ready to leave we are given a wooden shovel with the name Nicaragua on it, it is carved out of one piece of wood and used on the drying patio to move the coffee, it is on display at the Roasterie. We will now head back to Managua to spend the night, on our way out of town we look for a coffee cooperative store to buy some green coffee stuff. We ask and our given directions to one but it turns out to be a hardware store as do the next four locations we are given. We finally find a store that sells machetes (that are used in the coffee fields) and baskets all of which is purchased for fewer than five dollars.
We arrive back in Managua for an overnight stay. On the way to the hotel we pass a large tent city and I find out later that a large multi national company had sprayed the banana fields with an insecticide that cause many people major health problems. The company settled the lawsuits and made payments to those injured but these people living on the fringe of the fields were left out of the settlement and have taken over this park to protest hoping to get the attention of the government for some kind of resolution. Danny, Chino and David decide to out for the evening but I opt to stay in. During the night several times the electricity goes off but you can hear a large generator kicking on to supply power. In the morning Dave and I are fascinated by the homes across the street being fumigated, the people come out of the house but the gentleman fumigating enters wearing no protection as the fog pours out of the homes, they look like they are on fire. A short ride to the airport where we pass through customs with ease, Danny and Dave go shopping but I relax and watch the people and begin thinking about Mama Lulu. I fantasized she might have been Howard Hughes lover when he lived here and her son was his love child and he was hiding out from the Hughes heirs. Two gentleman in suits approach and I suspect they are going to throw me against the wall and ask me what I know of Mama Lulu. They pass by, the flight is called, home
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