A cuppa

Ok, so ends Kashs reign of terror. For now. Her rebels are still hiding in the mountains, I fear only waiting for the rains to end to make another strike.

I wanted to post a quick note about Coffee. Coffee is Nicaraguas main export. It grows everywhere, even on the forest floors of the national parks. Nica exported 156,137,895 pounds of coffee last year. Thats 150 pounds of coffee for every man, woman and child. Thier coffees sell all over the world and some of them have been grown from the same seeds for 300 years. Each bean handpicked, on forest floors and volcanic slopes. The beans are spread in the sun and then turned by hand, while they dry for days. Then the beans are packaged in 185 pound bags which are piled on workers shoulders, carried to the trucks, to bump down dirt roads, to be assembled in the ports, piled into containers, put on ships, where they are laboriously unloaded, unpakced roasted and then repacked.
So what do they drink in Nica?
Instant coffee.
With hot water.
At every restuarant, in every home, the only kind of coffee that you can get is powedered instant coffee. The only place in Granada, the richest city in Nica, that we have found that offers real cofee is Euro Cafe, which is owned and frequented only by Gringos.
I have asked three people and they all tell me that instant is cheaper, and besides boiling all that water and making hot coffee is just too much work for people in Nica...