So in the morning I got a cab to the bus terminal, only to discover there were no more seats on the bus I needed to catch, and no other bus on that line until the late afternoon. Another rather long cab ride later I was at another bus terminal, where I promptly boarded the next bus to the border. As always, crossing the border was a breeze (I'm not looking forward to that changing, as it probably will sometime), and I got another pair of buses to a town called Estelí.
Baseball is huge in Nicaragua; seen just outside Estelí.
A lot of people seem to have a really high opinion of Estelí, but to me it seemed really similar to most of the colonial-style towns I've been through. It's really close to a couple of huge nature reserves, and there's a pretty big tobacco industry in the area, so it was interesting for those in any case. The day after I arrived I did a tour to the Cañon de Somoto (cañon = canyon), which was a combination of walking, swimming and jumping off shit for about 4 hours down a river canyon. Apparently the highest point they jump from is around 20m, though the only one crazy enough to do it was the guide, most of the rest of us just went from 10-12m...
The morning after the Cañon tour, I went on another tour to a cigar factory. Someone told me that there's loads of tobacco companies in the area because a lot of cigar makers fled there when Castro was taking over in Cuba, but I'm a little dubious about that. Who knows... The cigar factory tour was really interesting: the company that owns it only really makes their own brand to sell in the small store they have attached, with the majority of the cigars produced there being under license to other brands. The tour covered everything from the workshop where they make all the different boxes, through to where the cigars are prepared for sale and boxed.
Making boxes.
There was a few piles like this, I'm not sure how many boxes they need, but I'm pretty sure the guide said they make something like 15k cigars a day...
Custom boxes for some luxury brand or order, with the foil-inlaying machine on left.
More fancy boxes of different designs.
Tobacco fermentation room. The big pallets sit for a year fermenting, and the workers have to cycle the tobacco from the inside to the outside once every week or two for that time. The middle was really warm, the outside not so much.
Tobacco drying post-fermentation.
Women sorting the tobacco based on grade. The grades relate to thickness, and between the 3 I could feel basically no difference. mad skillz at work.
More tobacco sorters.
Post-sorting, ready to be mixed in whatever proportion the particular cigars require and rolled.
The rolling room. All the cigars are made here by pairs of workers (1 male, 1 female).
The male mixes the leaves as required for the mix, and uses the big black rolling machine to roll it tightly, the puts it in the form on top to pass to the woman on the right.
The woman takes all the centres and cuts the leaves they're using as a skin into the shape, then rolls it around the centre, before putting them back in the mold to be pretty by the stack of weights in the other pic above.
Curing the cigars, there's 2 of these rooms, temperature- and humidity-controlled.
Packing the cigars into their plastic covers then whatever box they're to be sold in.
Freezing them for a week or so to kill bacteria/fungus and thereby improve shelf-life.
Fancy twisty triple-cigar-
The day after the cigar tour I went by bus to León, a reasonably touristy colonial city surrounded by volcanoes. The last I'd heard from Callum I assumed he'd be there within a couple of days, so I went to a couple of museums and other touristy stuff around the city while I waited so we could go volcano boarding (León is probably most famous among tourists for this: get a bit of wood and ride down a supermini Ngaruahoe), and maybe another trek or two. León is the home of the second branch of Quetzaltrekkers, the non-profit guide-run company we went with in Guatemala.
First thing I did was go to the roof of the cathedral. I really wish this was possible in more of these towns, as they're usually in really picturesque locations, but there's never anything tall to get a nice vista of...
The next day I went to the Museum of Legends and Traditions, a repurposed prison that was used from the 20's til the 70's to hold and generally mistreat political dissidents. Now the cells are filled with dolls and such which represent local legends (famous historical figures along with folk tales), none of which I can remember..
The following day (I was trying to make it as drawn-out as possible, and doing stuff in the afternoons usually involves much rain), I went to another place called the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs, but I think I wanted the museum of the same, as the Gallery was basically just a load of boards with little student ID photos of a lot of the youth that died in Nicaragua's civil war. Interesting, and with a little bit of background, but not what I expected... That afternoon I decided I was done waiting for Callum to email me and booked in to do volcano boarding, one of the main things León is famous for.
There's a whole bunch of companies that run volcano boarding tours, but they all cost roughly the same, and almost all of them are privately-owned, for-profit companies, so I did it through Quetzalrekkers again (also as far as I know the only company that lets you do 2 runs instead of one!). We met at their office relatively early, loaded into a truck, and drove for an hour and a half or so out to the foot of Central America's youngest volcano: Cerro Negro (Black Hill):
After an hour or so's walk to the top, we were rewarded with some pretty nice views:
After 'mirin for a while, we got ready to board down. Apparently the speed record is something like 70km/hr, if I remember correctly. Naturally, I wanted to try and break it, so I tried as hard as possible. I suspect you need a fresh board with some crazy wax or something, coz without braking at all I only got up to 40 or so (also assuming my phone's speedo worked, but I think it's reasonably reliable)
Naturally, I wasn't satisfied with such a low speed, so I tried again, but rolled a bunch at maybe 30. Surprisingly wasn't too dirty:
When I first booked the volcano boarding, I had an email from Callum when I got back saying that he was staying at a retreat-type thing based on organic permaculture, near Jinotega to the northeast (http://www.hijuela.com/labiosferaretreat.html - if you're ever in northern Nicaragua you should check it out!), so I told him I'd be there in 2 days and ran a few errands before leaving León.
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