Wednesday, March 26, 2008
 | The stores are stocked with thermos plastic coolers, bbq grills and beach towels as Easter aka Semana Santa is almost here. For the Nicas it’s all about celebrating the resurrection with booze and beach parties. It’s the official beginning of the summer season. Fun in the sun, all the beach towns are booked solid. It’s been mid nineties and sunny most days. Granada is blessed with a strong breeze coming east of the lake… Today on the way to breakfast there was a school parade. A hundred or so secondary school kids dressed in matching crisp white uniforms marching down the street with a marching band and a horse drawn float. The float had some faux rockery and featured a ten year old boy in loin cloth and wig getting nailed to the cross, but so far I haven’t seen a chocolate bunny anywhere. A new friend of mine died here last month before I could visit her butterfly farm. I think a lot of people come here with serious diseases and hope to have some fun before they go some place really really hot. She makes five in a year. Some where around the middle of March is my two year anniversary of quitting my last jewelry job and starting to spend time down south here. And so far other than some odd rashes and sinus adjustment my health is fine. I was losing weight for a while but now a days I think I might be putting some back on. It’s easy to eat well here with a little ingenuity. Tonight I’m grilling a filet mignon and some choyote squash with a mixed greens salad…Even figuring the charcoal in this lovely meal will set me back less than 2.50...Most all the beef is tough. All scrawny grass fed mixed Brahman texas long horn type critters so the choice cuts are worth seeking out. I used a filet to make an Irish beef stew yesterday. The carrots here are as big as a turnip. The corn is for drying and grinding into masa for tortillas. Not for eating off the cob, there are vendor grilling ears of corn in the park. They have a grill made out of an old tire rim and stoke up their coals with melting plastic bags. The near incinerated cobs are the best. Still tough like field corn.. The jumbo watermelons are back. I got a great deal on a 12 kilo watermelon from a street vendor about ten blocks from my house. I regretted buying it after walking all the back to my place in the mid day sun with a kid sized melon balanced on my shoulder. It was sweet but I’ll stick to the little round melons instead. I bought a mid sized 28 pounder in the Mercado because the crop was in a farm truck and farm fresh. The melon was heavy and dark green but when I cut into it the flesh was pink and the seeds were white.. It was ripe, not sweet but not bad, an albino….. Mangos are in season and after visiting some friends new place I was given a grocery bag full and again today I got another dozen or so. These today are smaller and are called Indio Mangos. When Nicas talk about fruit or veggies being Indio I think it’s an old variety like heritage tomatoes. I peeled a bunch of the two and blended up a jug of mango juice, maybe I’ll put some on my steaks later. Papayas are huge three foot long critters but still cost about a buck or so. They have a small green oval fruit coming into season that they call tiny apple but it’s not any kind of apple. It’s tart with a pit. All the leaves fall those trees at the beginning of the dry season and then the fruit rains from the bare trees. The fruit lady on the corner had some new (to me) fruits that look like kiwis. It seems ever since the 1700s they have been mixing and matching tropical plants and fruits. Planting helter skelter all over the world. I don’t know what’s indigenous to any where. I went to Managua to met with the manager of Naturealaza Foods about buying whole sale from them. He was a sharp bi-lingual guy and was happy to set me up with a whole sale account. It’s still more than I used to pay at Trader Joes for nuts but here is so not there. These peanuts are clean, unsalted and the quality is consistent. Natureleza raised the price of roasted peanuts about 80 percent a month ago and I was hoping I could get a better price direct from the source. I bought about 40 pounds of peanuts and a couple pounds of cashews as well as some tahini, a hand full of almonds and an odd Chinese Ginseng Soda. I had two cloth grocery bags and my mochilla (back pack) with me all stuffed with bags of shelled peanuts around noon when I left Naturealiza and was looking for a taxi. I was only six or so blocks from a giant shopping mall called Metro Center. Even tho Metro Center has the best coffee shop in Nicaragua I had the driver take me straight to the La Union grocery store. The grungy little "super" that I shop at in Granada, the Pali is mostly owned by Wall Mart but La Union is 100 percent Wall Mart based out of Costa Rica. They strive to be a North American style store. Nice produce and bakery stuff. They have excellent imported meat too. They have lot’s of odd USA stuff like Jack Daniels Steak Sauce, Miller Beer and TGI Fridays frozen pizzas and stuff. Well except for it’s not even close to frozen. The giant ten dollar bags of Ore Ida frozen onion rings felt like a slurpee in a sack. I bought some filet mignon ($2.50 lb), local made garlic sauce, pita bread and some other hard to come culinary odds and ends.. This area is near the old pre earth quake/ war Managua not much of any age left standing and all the new first world style buildings are clustered around 6 lane rotundas or round abouts. The traffic gets up to speed and they was no bus stop on the Carretera Masaya so I flagged the first mini Toyota bus back to Granada. These tiny busses are taking your life in your hands kind of stuff but it was sooooo hot. The drivers of these tiny 14 passenger mini vans are the kamikaze pilots of the Nica road way. First bus to come along gets the passenger dollars so they race each other to stop lights and swing over two lanes in order to screech to a stop, push a another rider on and then pull out in front of bike taxi and a slower old school bus packed with riders… Horns blast on and on again. I was scrunched in the middle of the backseat with my three bags. The seat next to a chubby and sweaty gringo is the last seat to go but we filled up fast and the sun was roasting the van. When we got crammed full the chofer fired up the under powered ac and we raced on to Granada.. The streets are nearly deserted from noon till three or four in the afternoon. Businesses open around two but it’s still quite. Road construction in front of a multi story gringo palace forced the bus route a few blocks closer to my place so I saved a couple of blocks….. We survived Easter Week with only 61 fatalities nationwide. Lot’s of drunks drowning and 16 country folks hacked to death with machetes. Like most holiday here the actual day is eclipsed by the week leading up to it.. And beer, rum and moonshine figure in to all the events and parties. It’s not all unusual to see men sleeping it off on the side walk and public urination is widely practiced. Mostly by drunks and little kids. This is the first year that the alcadia (mayor’s office) has arranged toilets for the estimated 70,000 people partying lake side…. With every one at the beach the city has been quiet. The shops were all closed from Thursday on. It seemed the only people on the street were gringos and street hawkers….But now the tourists will fade away and the temp goes up every day…It was over a hundred a few days ago. I am hoping to enjoy some spring like weather next month while in the USA… So more tales and misc from 12 degrees north of the equator next month….hasta nos vemos….Steve |
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