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Subdued by Street Vendors - Page 2

Subdued by Street Vendors - Page 2
Story and photos by Darrin DuFord

Page 2 of a gastronomic exploration of Nicaragua's post-war highlands.

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The Little Horse
I always seem to attract drunks in my travels. Maybe I've listened to too many Tom Waits songs. Maybe it's my appreciation of hearing thoughts stripped down to their candid essentials by a buoyant blood alcohol level. Or, in the case of yet another encounter on a narrow Matagalpan side street, two construction workers invited me to chat with their easy-to-understand, boozy Spanish. They had finished their shifts and were now hard at work on a bottle of Caballito, or "Little Horse," the country's White Castle of hooch. Any rural road in Nicaragua would be naked without a few crushed and faded plastic Caballito bottles underfoot.

But drowning in sorrows they were not. "Tell me, amigo, what country has the best beaches, mountains, lakes, seafood, volcanoes, landscapes, and gold?" one asked me.  He didn't wait for me to answer. "It's Nicaragua!" he gloated, without a hint of irony. His friend nodded in agreement after a slight post-Caballito grimace and passed the bottle.

I reflected on how I had been struck by the attractiveness of vistas almost everywhere I looked in the country (excepting the sprawling chaos of Managua). I'm sure the views helped, but happiness is a frame of mind, after all. How the duo can have so little yet still trumpet their country, the second poorest in the Western hemisphere, showed a resilient coping mechanism and an intrepid lust for life that's AWOL in the world of cubicles and plasma televisions and Hello Kitty waffle makers.

The Return of Great Coffee
At 4 am, the cathedral must have been locked, because I awoke to a throng of people mumbling prayers of mass in the street. A warped brass band, filling in the silences with soggy, funeral-like blurts, provided accompaniment. It was another Holy Week preparation. But without bikini tops and tuna, just what did they think they were doing?

Far from chocolate, the bag of chicha de cacao, or cacao juice, I bought from a breakfast vendor at the Parque Morazán was white and tasted like coconut because the seeds were not dried and fermented. The juice packed plenty of energy for my imminent hike around a coffee cooperative in nearby La Reina.

Abandoned by cronies of the Somoza family (the American-backed dictators that ran the country for four decades until overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979), the Danilo Gonzalez cooperative resulted from the Sandinistas' redistribution of oligarchic land to campesinos. The cooperative, founded in 1983, sells Fair Trade coffee, guaranteeing members $1.35 per pound of Arabica beans, about double what they would receive from a traditionally unscrupulous middleman. The latter offer is often not enough for farmers to break even.

During the Contra War, brigades of European volunteers arrived to pick coffee beans on this farm to keep the Nicaraguan wartime economy going, an effort that eventually failed because the brigades competed with the Contras, who were destroying crops, schools, and ports. Both sides heavily mined the countryside in the 1980s, a fact I considered when the guide led me into the lushness of the farm's coffee bushes, although the Matagalpa area has been mine-free since 2002. Farmers who could not wait for the under-funded de-mining teams taught themselves clearing techniques, and thus mines became one of Nicaragua's lesser-known bumper crops.

After facing a burden of over 170,000 mines in her soil, Nicaragua has claimed that at the current rate of mine removal, the country will be declared free of the weapons in just a few years' time. While that's a statistic to be proud of, I would bet the tourism board is having a difficult time capitalizing on it. Come to Nicaragua: almost all the mines have been cleared!

The project is helping 53 farmers make a living in a country that is half unemployed or underemployed. With such a success story, the farm could make a killing on tourists, if only the farm built a tasting room and sold coffee bags. But the tourism aspect of the farm is still young, and for now, the farm told me to buy Matagalpan Fair Trade coffee when I'm in the States, since that keeps the whole Fair Trade system going.

A Highway Hit
With my cheeks full of rum-flavored chocolates made by hand at the nearby Castillo del Cacao (Chocolate Castle), I climbed into the bus that would take me back to the capital. Vendors entered with baskets of water boobs and buttery cheese cookies called rosquillas. Bustle as usual. I realized that in Matagalpa, the people did not allow their war-torn past to hold the present hostage. I never discovered where the aggression went.

I was left wondering about other Nicaraguan conundrums, like why the so-called express bus was making a stop on the highway. We pulled into a lot that looked like an abandoned bus terminal and the driver shut off the engine.

Then the shouting began. From the outside.

Approaching the bus from every direction, arcs of white teeth aimed upward, open mouths hollering in a vicious drone. There were too many of them—I couldn't make out what they were saying. Did they have someone's head on a stick? Did they want someone's head on a stick?

I tried to discern whether the mob was robbing the bus, but I had to make that decision quickly, because they were beginning to reach up into the windows, trying to shove in dark objects that wouldn't fit.

And then I began to understand the shouts. We were being invaded by bags of onions and half-green tomatoes.

Once the front door was breached, in came the squadrons of ice cream vendors. Then a wave of mushy fried chicken, apparently cooked during Reagan's first term. They strafed us with rosquillas, the vendors pushing free samples towards our mouths. OK! I surrender! I'll eat it!

I seemed to have discovered a new generation of Nicaraguan guerilla maneuvers after all. To defend yourself, instead of needing an AK-47, you only need to draw out your haggling skills and a quick sense of what produce is the ripest. And you might want to keep some charcoal tablets in your holster in case you need to reckon with that fried chicken.

Darrin DuFord's book Is There a Hole in the Boat? Tales of Travel in Panama without a Car won the silver medal in the 2007 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards. A past contributor to Perceptive Travel, he has also written for Transitions Abroad, The Panama News, and GoNOMAD.com. Read his latest travel pieces and recipes on his web site, www.omnivoroustraveler.com. When not traveling, he can be found near the souvlaki and tamale carts in his hometown of Astoria, New York.

Related stories:

The Peanut Fields of Guayaquil by Darrin DuFord
Coup in a Cup by Darrin DuFord
Monkey Brains and Mangosteens by Ayun Halliday
Extreme Eating in Morocco by Amy Rosen

Other Mexico and Central America stories from the archives