A capital and Granada with a cigar flavor

Monday, August 7th

In exactly 1 week from now we will be voting one participant off the Golf. Who will it be? I get a feeling that Greg will be kicked out.. what do you think?

In any case, this morning we have a bit of logistics to work out. This is because Todd´s uncle set us up with Perdomo Cigars in Esteli, Nicaragua for a visit to their plant here. Last night, we slept in this nice little town in the western mountains once ruled by the Sandinistas. However, we had not been able to work out the details of our visit to the factory since it was the weekend. So this morning we catch us with the president of the company and he sets everything up for us in one swoop.

After breakfast at a local hole in the wall, we head back to the hotel and wait until 10AM when we are going to head to the Perdomo plant. We arrive there but our contact is still in the tobacco fields with some employees so he orders Mr. Miguel Rivera (very nice gentleman and now our impromptu tour guide) to show us around. The tour was awesome!!! We all enjoyed watching tobacco being cured for flavors and local workers doing all the work of rolling, cutting and packing cigars by hand! The smell in some of these rooms was so strong due to the fermentation of the tobacco that we almost broke into a sneezing attack. After Mr. Rivera explained everything there was to know about the manufacture of cigars, we treated ourselves to the purchase of a box of high quality cigars. We will be smoking them one of these nights to celebrate something (not sure what yet, but we´ll let you know). We say good bye to our gracious hosts at Perdomo Cigars, pick up our stuff from the hotels and hit the road. We have to thank a few people immensely: Todd´s uncle, Todd, Mr. Nick Perdomo Jr., Mr. Miguel Rivera, and Mr. Gonzalo Puentes for all their help setting up the tour.

On to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. We are expecting to see something very similar to central San Salvador there. That is, very busy people, people looking at your every move, etc. On the way there, still in Esteli, we take the car for an 6700 mile oil change. We have not been able to fit an oil change in our schedule but we did it today so Rosinante is feeling much better already! After this and a top up of our gas tank, we are in Managua in 1 1/2 hours. Managua proper was destroyed by repeated earthquakes and after the goverment discovered that the capital had been built on top of a major seismological fault line, it decided to relocate the city to nearby grounds. They basically took of right after the 1972 earthquake and the buildings were left there. It is a weird feeling to see these goverment buildings that once housed important people and now they have nothing inside. There is a eerie feeling in the air around here: emptiness everywhere and somewhat, danger.

We take some pictures in the remnants of this city and drive through some areas of it. There is nothing in this city, home to about 1 million Nicaraguans that would resemble a downtown area. Everything is spread out an built in a hurry. However, it´s very cool to see how this city came to be. After a couple of ours, we head for Granada, our final stop for the day.

On the drive to Granada, we see the Masaya volcanoe which has a really nice crater with steam coming from it on the right side of the road. (FYI: The Pacaya volcanoe that we visited near Antigua, Nicaragua has just started erupting again according to CNN a couple of days back). Granada is a cool little colonial town which gets hit most heavily by tourists then any other Nicaraguan city. It looks like an Antigua but has not reached the level of manicured tourist gardens and architecture that Antigua flaunts. However, this same fact is what enchants many visitors. It has a flavor of realistic beauty, the down to earth type of beauty.

We settled for a hotel a couple of blocks away from the city center. The air in the room is super hot!! This is going to be one of those a-la-Roatan style nights. But it will have to do because all other hotels here were very expensive. This was somewhat of a good value for the money. Rosinante is sleeping over at a private garage half a block away. Tonight we will try to enjoy the city and a bit of its night life. Tomorrow we will take some time off to visit historical sights and who knows? Perhaps we could even do some diving in the Lake Nicaragua where it is said there are some fresh water sharks to see under water!!!