More coffee farms...and a hospital visit to make it exciting

On Thursday we headed up to Waslala, 115km from Matagalpa but as it's an unsealed road, it takes 3 hours. These were up there with the most horrible 3 hours ever as I was super sick, and the drive was very, very bumpy. On arrival at the co-op, a doctor came to see me and said my blood pressure was very low and that I needed to come to the hospital. He put me on a drip for 3 hours and then let me go, this really helped! Must have been something I ate, the food has been a little on the dodgy side so doesn't surprise me. Un-ideal, but had to have happened to make the trip memorable. The hospital was a small concrete building, and no one spoke english so they had a local nun who spoke english come and translate for the doctor. A nun having to ask me if I'm pregnant has to be in the top 5 awkward chats of all time.

Waslala was badly affected by the Nicaraguan revolution in the 1980's, but since then has been (kind of) rebuilt. The town has electricity, television and cell phone service, but few of the outlying communities in this area have electricity or running water.





This morning we visited another co-op, who then took us to a couple of farms that provide cacao and coffee to them. One farm had 2 hectares of land, and produce 5 x 49kg sacks of coffee and 29 x 49kg sacks of cacao in the harvesting season. Again, all in Spanish, but Nora is able to translate some of it for me.

Cacao drying

Cacao on the tree 

What a crazy week. Have learnt a lot about growing and harvesting coffee, and cacao. Have visited a vast numbers of areas, and done a whole lot of kms in the car. I am ready to get back to Managua (didn't think I would ever be saying that!) and plan where I am going to go this weekend.