NEWS FROM NIC: Cruisin' to Cusmapa

We took a road trip today (with 3 friends) up to San Jose de Cusmapa which is a very small village located higher up in the mountains and nestled right in a beautiful pine forest. There is a local cooperative of women who make and sell pine needle baskets.

A picture of the women's cooperative in Cusmapa

They are raked all day long/takes 2 weeks to dry w/ this method

On the way to the little village, which is only 21 miles from here, we saw a coffee roasting place and lots of beans spread out to dry...so we stopped. We met the supervisor of the place, Javier, who spent the next hour explaining to us the entire process from planting and caring for the coffee bushes all the way to exporting the roasted coffee to the States...extremely interesting!

One of the things I found so remarkable is that they still hand rake the beans and dry them out in the sun but they use a computerized machine to determine the moisture content, color, weight and ultimately, the quality of the harvested beans.

Javier - expert in coffee production and brother in Christ

When Javier found out we were all missionaries (except for a Nicaraguan friend who joined us), he went from being very reserved and professional (although very kind) to being so excited, I thought he would burst. His whole countenance changed and his eyes sparkled and his face was almost glowing. He's been a Christian for 20 years and ministers in his church through music. We loved visiting with this precious brother in the Lord and we left with his name and phone number in our pockets.

Bringing coffee beans in to sell / our friend Niki

The next stop was in Los Sabanas to buy already roasted and freshly ground shade-grown coffee. We paid $2.88 for a one-pound bag! I'm really anxious to try it tomorrow morning and hope it tastes as wonderful as it smells!

When we were leaving, a man was bringing in coffee to sell to the Co-op and Niki had to have her picture taken with the horses. The man thought we were all a little crazy to take pictures of something like this!

We loaded back up in our car and kept climbing up higher in the mountains. Oh...I forgot to mention that the road up is a really rough and bumpy rock road. The road is impassable in places during the rainy season but thankfully, they've not had enough rain lately to prohibit travel. We did cross several places where the water had covered the road but nothing of any significance. We finally arrived at Cusmapa 3+ hours after we had left our house!

Looking out over the hazy mountain range...beautiful!

We pulled up in front of the Cooperative Store and no one was there! Seriously! But, Marlo, our Nicaraguan friend, hunted down the lady that works there so she opened it up for us. Our American friends loved shopping and bought enough that the lady called the owner so that she could come and help her with the pricing.

One hour later, three happy women, one soft-hearted husband and a bemused Nicaraguan gentleman left the shop in hunt of a place to eat lunch. Not an easy thing to find in a small little village on a Saturday afternoon at 3:15 in the afternoon! But there was a tiny little place on the way out of town that was still open and offered tacos and enchiladas (Nicaraguan style, not Tex-Mex!) and so we stopped.

The restaurant had 2 plastic tables, 6 chairs and 3 dogs! The area where the tables were had a concrete floor...the kitchen and the enclosed adjoining area which led to his house had dirt floors. I checked out the kitchen when we first arrived and made the decision not to look back there again! The owner took a broom to chase out the two visible dogs and shortly after, the one who was hiding behind a chair.

We each got one chicken taco (which resembles a taquito) and an enchilada (a folded 1/2 moon shaped fried tortilla that had rice, onion and chicken inside. And we each got a bottle of pop...the Orange Fanta had to have the lids removed with a bottle opener...and the man who owns the place (also the cook and the waiter) asked Jim and I if we wanted the orange drink or the black...the "black" drink was Coca Cola!

The food really wasn’t too bad…even the typical Nicaraguan cabbage salad, that was piled on top of the taco and enchilada, hit the spot. This is nothing more than shredded cabbage with some lemon juice, salt, sweet ketchup and crema acida (a kind of runny sour cream but still a little different in flavor…hard to explain) and doesn’t sound particularly appetizing but is surprisingly good. I have to admit that I would tell each one of you not to eat that salad but both Jim and I opted to eat it. So far, no ill effects.

Our bill for all five of us came to a grand total of 160 cord which equates to about $1.37 per person. The man was so gracious and treated us as though we were VIPs who were gracing his establishment, expressing his gratitude for us stopping to eat at his place. Actually, we were the ones who should have been extremely grateful to have found a place to eat so far away from anywhere! Jim gave him a nice tip and to say the man was thrilled would be an understatement.

I don’t know that we’ll be going back up that way again anytime soon but I wouldn’t hesitate to stop in again for lunch…I can overlook dogs in the dining area, dirt floors and no silverware (oh yeah…I forgot to share that part) in exchange for a smile and send-off like the one we got today as we were leaving. Remarkable times…

Coffee bushes and Spanish moss

Well, it was almost 4:00 p.m. as we started back home from Cusmapa. I was a little concerned that we were going to have to navigate those windy mountainous roads in the dark but coming down the mountain was a lot quicker than going up. We managed to get back to Somoto in about an hour and a half! Not bad for a 21 mile trip. :)