Date: 23/12
City: Selva Negra, Nicaragua
Kilometres ridden: 158
Cumulative kilometre: 28983
Yesterday we bought some Christmas hats; it took a while before we found some. The people in the streets looked at us a bit strange when they saw us wearing them 😀.
Anyway, we decided to take some pictures with our new trophies before we leave.
Then we packed up the bikes and drove them through the small gap onto the street….-we only lost the plastic cap for the camera..;-)
The rest of the way to was without major incidents and we hardly got lost 😀
Looking forward to Costa Rica where the maps are much better… We arrived at Selva Negra by following the instructions.
These were:
Follow the Road to Jinotega and turn right on the broken Army Tank…
It worked.
We settled in our room and decorated the window with our Christmas bits (we bought a tiny Christmas tree as well :). The picture on the right shows the view of our room.
For dinner we had some typical German food (Sausage with Sauerkraut and bacon potatoes) and the beer was served in a typical stein.
The next couple of days we won’t move and just relax. The most exciting part might be a tour through the farm, since they seemed to be very switched on with their environmental effort (Creating compost, using solar energy, creating hydroelectricity, recycle water, creating methane gas from waste products ……..).
Date: 24/12
City: Selva Negra, Nicaragua
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 28983
Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas! Well that was our first time in our lives that we celebrated Christmas all by ourselves, without any of our family.
It was really quiet and relaxed and the restaurant was nicely decorated for Christmas. At coffee time a huge Christmas cake arrived.
Unfortunately the power went down around Christmas time in Australia, so we couldn’t Skype –bummer!! But sitting in the restaurant with our hats did draw the attention of Eddi, the owner of the farm. He talked to Sigrid for a while about the farm and our travel.
Date: 25/12
City: Selva Negra, Nicaragua
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 28983
The next day we took a tour around the farm and had a look at their sustainable concepts. As far we could see they try to recycle everything and try to keep the carbon footprint as small as possible. During the tour we saw how the coffee cherries grow, were picked, sorted, pulped, washed and then dried. The beans were then sold to companies which do the sorting and roasting. During the trip we looked at the coffee cherry the first time and we realized that the coffee bean is the pip and that the flesh around the bean tastes sweet. I thought that you could only use the bean, but you can make all sorts of things of the flesh, like marmalade and spirits. Below are pictures of a coffee plantation, how the beans grow, the fermentation and washing process and the drying. The beans on the plant are hard to see since they grow in the shade of some trees or other plants.
After the farm tour we had a walk through the rainforest before we took a powernap 🙂
The next day we booked accommodation over New Year’s Eve. It is a nice place called Cabinas Villa Kunterbunt in Samara, a beach area in North-West of Costa Rica. At dinner we meet a nice couple – Kathy and Rick -from the Oregon. They lent us their playing cards for the night. 🙂
Tomorrow we will go the Granada, the oldest European city in mainland America.
