Matagalpa, Nicaragua - travelling north

This past weekend, Aleida and I drove up to Matagalpa, which is about 2-3 hours north of Managua.  Aleida's friend Carey hosted us, and showed us the sights.

There are a lot of things that are great about Matagalpa, the greatest being that there is a 5-10 degrees decrease in temperature (to me this is perfect!)  Another great part is that the city is pretty safe, and walk-able. We arrived on Friday night just before dark, and had to drive around a catholic parade, that was doing stations of the cross on Carey's street.  After eating at a local Nicaraguan place, we walked the city a little and visited a friend.

Directions to Carey's house

The next morning we got up early and hiked up out of the city (its in a valley) and hiked along the ridge surrounding it.  Unfortunately, we don't have pictures of this as its pretty remote, and Carey said that bringing our cameras was an invitation to be robbed. We hiked for 3-4 hours around the perimeter of the city and it was great to see all the green!  Matagalpa is very green and lush compared to Managua, and especially as we are quite far into the dry season, Matagalpa still has green trees.

We drove to a lookout so we could have pictures of the whole city.  

After this we got home for a snack before heading out to the "El Castillo del Cacao" chocolate factory.   The factory was started by two Dutch people and a Chilean.  Here in Matagalpa, 2 women make artisan chocolate, mostly by hand, with cacao from Nicaragua.  They make 700 bars of chocolate per day, from the cacao bean, roasting, crushing, mixing, heating, cooling, molding and packaging. Amazing and delicious.  We got to try all the different kinds, and they also had delicious coffee to go with it (the other main resource there).

Miking the chocolate to make it smooth

Making packaging for the chocolate

Super sterile!  Or at least Nicaraguan style

We visited the NCA-Matagalpa school as well and played ultimate frisbee there as in the afternoon.  Let's just say I was pretty tired after that!  We went back and made dinner and then went to sleep.
We got up the next morning to travel about 30 minutes farther north to Selva Negra, which is a cloud forest protected area.  There is a hotel and restaurant there as well as many hiking trails.  We hiked the Mosquita trail higher on the ridge and got to enjoy the rainforest.  It was nice to see so many familiar plants!  Aleida said she should have come there when she was feeling homesick for Canada.  After hiking we had a delicious organic burger and cake, along with a couple more cups of coffee (all in little dutch cups).  After enjoying a lot of food, we made our way back to Carey's house and hung out for another hour before making our way back to Managua.  All in all, a beautiful place, and it only makes me want to go back!  To me that's a mark of a good place.

Carey and Aleida hiking the hills of Selva Negra (named after the Black Forest in Germany)

A beautiful chapel on the grounds

The roots of the tree

Hiking down a less developed path

Coffee in the black plastic bags, roasting or drying in the sun!

What Matagalpa is known for: coffee beans drying in the sun.