Caffeine Central: Week Four - Matagalpa and Playa Gigante

Last week I spent three days living in Matagalpa and working from the mill in Sebaco. It takes half an hour to get from Matagalpa to Sebaco each day by bus, and cost 10 cordoba (35 cents).

Ecom own two mills, and Sebaco is the larger of the two. This is there the coffee is dried, sorted, graded, processed, bagged and loaded into containers to ship all over the world. They have around 1300 people working there at the moment, with around 900 of these being temporary employees as it is the peak of the season. Sebaco is a very dry and sunny area, it never rains and is very hot all year round. There is a bit of a breeze which is good for the coffee as it helps it dry and regulate a consistent temperature.

At the mill I did lots of cupping of the various grades of coffee to be able to see the differences, walked around watching the workers and talked with Morgan about what goes on there. It was a good few days.

Coffee beans before being laid out to dry

All dry and ready to rest in bags for 30 days

Shipping container ready for export

Matagalpa is a very cool little town. I was staying with Morgan, who is from California and working at the mill for a year, so he showed me around. There are lots of American expats living there, mainly doing projects on coffee, working in coffee or volunteer work. One couple I met moved here from the states with their three young kids to open an ice cream shop. Seriously some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had, was hard to pick from the 20 or so flavours but tried blueberry lavender, salted caramel and mint with chocolate sprinkles. Amazing. We also ate at some of the food stands for dinner; $2 for two delicious pork and pineapple tacos. I could live here.

On Saturday morning I made my way down to Rivas, two hours by bus from Managua, and a steep price of 48 cordoba ($1.80). I then caught a taxi for 40 minutes (and $20) until I finally arrived at my destination, Playa Gigante, located on the Pacific Coast. I had been told that there wasn’t a lot to do in this very small town except go for walks, go to the beach, eat delicious food and relax..Perfect, as that was all I planned on doing for the next three days.

I spent my first afternoon lying in a hammock reading my book, bliss. I met a lovely lady named Maria, from New York, on my second day so had a friend to go walking with which was really nice. We went exploring and found a very beautiful and untouched beach, Playa Amarilla. I also ventured around the headlands the other way and found another private beach, Playa Redonda. I would have loved to stay for longer, but on Monday I caught the bus back to Managua to go back to work.