We are lucky enough to be spending the next 20 months in Latin America. As we travel anti-clockwise around South America, before heading up to Central America, we hope to meet lots of lovely people, learn some Latin dance moves and enjoy yummy new food. We're writing this blog to keep friends and family up to date with a particular focus on food, farmers and football...
Baseball is the national sport in Nicaragua. It's the game kids choose to play most often and there's Sunday leagues organised throughout the country. There's a number of Nicaraguan players dotted about the US major leagues and so this is where a lot of the spectating is done, via national and cable television. There is, however, a pro-league in Nicaragua in which four teams compete, playing in different cities around the country. I had a free Sunday so I decided to check out a game in Esteli where Oriental were playing Chinandega. I had been here previously with Rachel for the Catholic radio song contest, and there were a lot more people on that occasion. This time around there were several hundred people sat on the concrete seats in the big iron stand. I paid $3 to get in, but received a free upgrade to the covered stand when the sun started shining on the seats that I was in. I chose to support Oriental, because they had bigger bellies and bigger mullets and a nice grey and red kit. As it turned out, most of the people from Esteli were supporting Chinandega and they were the better team. Four hours was quite a long time to watch baseball and most of the scoring seemed to come from mis-fielding and a bumpy infield. There was an impressive array of goodies on sale, including ice-cream, beer, crisps, chips, barbecued meat, sweets, gum and fags. I followed the game to the bitter end, which Oriental lost 15-11 by being worse than Chinandega. The winning team congratulated themselves and, for those who understand it (I just about do), the scoreboard in the background shows the story of the game.
It was an interesting trip out, but I'm looking forward to returning to the football ground a lot more than I am the baseball ground.
Not since San Salvador at the end of June had I seen a live football match but with a free night in Esteli while a night game was on, it was definitely time to end the drought. Baseball is the biggest sport in Nicaragua with larger tv audiences and is the sport most placed by kids. Football though is gaining popularity fast as more people get access to cable tv and lately the streets of Leon are full of 5-a-side games of an evening. There are plenty of shirts or stickers around for Barcelona, Madrid or the top premiership teams. The national side have never achieved anything but there is a lot of interest in the success of neighbouring Honduras qualifying for the World Cup. The national league is basic but Esteli are one of the better teams and attendances have been boosted recently by the advent of floodlit evening games. The lights were brightly leading the way to the ground as I walked down past the funfair opposite the ground and into an impressive number of fans with a good showing of home shirts. The tickets were 3, 4 or 5 dollars and I went for the main stand luxury where my digital camera would be a little less of a novelty, though as it happened the whole ground was very safe and friendly. The pitch was grassy but clearly hard and uneven and the 3-sided ground was nearly half full with maybe 2000 fans and 60 away fans, all in good mood. Real Esteli, who play in red and white, are sponsored by Bimbo (bread) while Walter Ferreti, who play in red and black are sponsored by the police.Real Esteli fans behind the goal. The three banners from left to right read, 'In heaven or in hell, wherever you are, I will be!!!'; 'My old woman gave me life and The Train gave me my heart - Player number 12 is present'; 'Sometimes drunk, always with The Train'
A bonus was the sort-of-large screen showing live tv coverage of the match but with a good 5 second delay. This led to an amusing set of replays showing the crowd how skilfully an Esteli winger had managed to deliberately kick the player in the head who had just fouled him; the fans cheered loudly and the ref chose not to look. The official commentator used this phone as a microphone throughout the game
The first half went by in a blur of poor refereeing, with the away side looking the more organised and it was they who took the lead with a long free kick headed in by a running forward showing rather better timing and awareness than the Esteli defence. Free quick goes close for Real Esteli. Note the 'big' screen behind showing live action.
The most noise thus far came at half time as some uncomfortable looking lycra-clad girls were paraded around the pitch to promote a mobile phone company, to the whistles, lewd comments and laughs of the crowd, around 80% of whom were male.
The second half started like the first with the home side looking short of ideas and the lead was soon doubled as a run to the by-line and pull back was finished off with a neat low drive. Things were looking bad for Esteli.
I started chatting with a lad next to me who turned out to be a youth team player and mostly interested in which Chelsea players I thought were good. I’m not really sure he got the concept of me supporting a team from the fifth division as there is no real pyramid system in Nicaragua. I was interested to find out that the top player at the club earns $1500 a month and he was bemused to find out players at his favourite English club can earn over $100,000 a week. “Can you see them in the street?” he wanted to know, and “does Frank Lampard help the poor people where he lives?” “Not really” and “probably a bit” were the best I could do. He was happy to hear that the clubs help with community projects and there are good youth academies that are free if you’ve got the talent.
Back to the game and against the run of play Esteli pulled one back with 10 minutes to go, possibly directly from a free kick that went through a crowd of players. That was a signal for the fans to get excited and noisy and for the players to give it a go. Well into several minutes of injury time, or play-acting time as it is in Latin America, a long ball beat the Walter Ferreti centre back and, with the forward through on goal, the keeper chose to go for the legs. The ball nearly rolled in but as it was cleared from the line the ref pointed to the spot and sent off the keeper. After several minutes of stropping the penalty was put away and I cheered in genuine joy for the unlikely comeback of my new Nicaraguan team. There was time for Esteli to go close again before the whistle blew and it was the away team breathing a sigh of relief.
Video of last gasp equalising goal for Real Esteli
Man of the match was surely the Walter Ferreti left back and number 2 who caused most of the damage down the wing and tackled like a tiger too.
The action wasn’t over yet however as no sooner had the game ended than one of the Walter Ferreti players launched an attack on the referee who luckily saw him coming and sprinted away with a look of panic written across his face. Players from both teams then got very giddy and a few punches were thrown. This sparked a brief pitch invasion and the intervention of some helpful police officers to break up the melee. All in all it looked a rather fun pitch invasion and I was almost tempted to join the young lad who I had been talking to and who I now noticed was on the grass.
The video below shows the general confusion after the final whistle, with the referees standing well away from the action and, noticeable, standing near the bottom of the picture in his baggy shorts, is the youth player I was talking to. Unfortunately, I just missed the attack on the referee by the Walter Ferreti player whilst I was busy celebrating the comeback.
It was a fun end to a good match and a fine result for the boys in red and white. Hopefully it won’t be long until I’m back there for another game to support Esteli, ‘El Tren del Norte’.
We're continuing with our Monday arts and crafts mornings, designing posters for rural workshops run by the women's organisation, Xilonem. This week, it was gender roles - how are they and how should they be? This poster sums up a typical countryside scene. For the girls, it's dolls, dresses and washing clothes; for the boys, it's bats, balls and machetes. For the young ladies, it's virginity and sweetness; for the lads, it's getting it on with as many young ladies as possible - surely there is a paradox here? For the women, traditionally, it's babies, babies, babies, fidelity, sweeping the house, washing the clothes and preparing and cooking the food; for the men, it's land, horses, meetings, posturing and a few women on the side. Obviously, it's not all like this but many aspects of it are the reality for a surprising number of families. We're learning more about this with our time spent in the countryside and participating in the workshops in Sontule.
Simon depicted the happy scenes of caring and sharing. Notice how the woman chopping wood is keeping a safe, stretched distance from the log. Maybe he is keen to avoid her being weed on by a caterpillar and contracting a weeping wound on her neck.
This horror is as big as a hand. It spent a good forty minutes on our bedroom wall in Lagartillo, where we were home alone on Sunday night. We spotted the beast by candlelight and were unsure what to do. I showed the photo to a work colleague today who thinks it is a dangerous poisonous creature. He isn't sure whether it is a scorpion or a spider though, which slightly detracts from his danger declaration.
When we spotted one another, and shone the candle on it, the beast shot into the corner of the room where it cowered behind a dissembled hammock. We cowered under the sheets and there was a stand off. I encouraged Simon to end this by somehow removing the spider/scorpion from the room using the hammock. He refused and fortunately, the creature had the good sense to leave of its own accord. It ambled upwards at a leisurely pace and disappeared over the top of the wall into the roof or garden. I think it's best not to consider how many of his or her type are lurking in the countryside here.
A delicious pure fruit orange and carrot ice lolly in Leon. This lovely cafe only sells these ice lollies. Nothing more. Nothing less. But they come in lots of tasty flavours, including watermelon, melon, coconut, tamarind, mango and rice pudding (which we realise isn't pure fruit, but it is natural and yummy).
By contrast, and contrary to its appearance, this is the most revolting drink and fruit you are ever likely to set eyes on - nancy, or to Nicaraguans, nancite. Fortunately, the season is finally coming to an end, as its been stinking out buses, street corners and restaurants for a couple of months now. This nasty berry is best described as 'vomit juice'. The berries themselves are chalky, cloying and taste of vomit. In a juice, with plenty of ice, the first sip is bearable, but then as you swallow it, the full vomit force comes to the fore. Jon (pictured below) has recently arrived in Nicaragua. We thought it best that he experience the juice for himself rather than rely on our judgement. The vomit flavour had a delayed reaction for him and he got several sips in before it hit. At this point, he gave up and we gave the rest of it to a street kid. We were told by the restaurant owner that it is the most popular fresh juice in Nicaragua and the boy was delighted with it. They can all keep it and we'll stick with the passion fruit and guayaba juice options. Taking on a nancite juice is an unpleasantly memorable experience for any tourist. You have to be brought up on this stuff or live here for a good long time to tolerate it.
ESKIMO has a national monopoly on ice-cream. There are at least five ESKIMO's in every town plus lots of ESKIMO street vendors with carts. Flavour of the month is a bargain at just 7 cordobas (around 25p) a cone. Simon buys the flavour of the month at least once a day when he's in a town and knows in advance the date that the flavour is due to switch. The flavours of the month are currently fig and condensed milk (Simon pictured with this), strawberry or chocolate and vanilla.
Another chalky, moderately offensive fruit (although it has nothing on nancite) currently in season and popular with the locals called jocote. Sold in clear food bags on the streets with salt and chile sauce, its dryness tends to leave your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth and other than that, the main points are coping with the excessive salt and chile. We have also tried the ripe stewed version of this fruit in natural yoghurt and it is definitely the preferable option. Guayabas are in season and they're yummy. The trees are full of them in the countryside and their distinctive sweet smell and refreshing zingyness are a current highlight on our long walk to Sontule each week. Larger varieties, like the one pictured, are on sale in the streets of Esteli. People bite into them as we would an apple. A couple of weeks ago in Leon, Nick cooked a bean soup with lots of 'trimmings' for a group of us. It was an ambitious undertaking given the heat and that everyone's soup was tailored to their egg preferences (poached/scrambled/fried). He managed the individualised frying pans admirably and the result was delicious.
The bean soup included a poached egg, fried onion and garlic, baby sweetcorn, cuajada salty cheese, green beans, peppers and avocado. It was an early start for me in Sontule one day to make sweet corn tortillas, guirilas, with Lucia. Normal tortillas have the consistency of a dry dough and have to be 'palmed' into shape - forceful downward finger taps with one hand whilst simultaneously circular shaping the tortilla with the other hand. This sort of guirila is much simpler, it just needed a bit of swirling around the banana leaf with a spoon to form its circular shape. It was then cooked on the banana leaf on a hot plate over the wood-burning stove.
The warm guirila made a satisfying breakfast served with fresh cuajada cheese, made from curdled cow's milk from the farm. When we're in Esteli, we like to go our local Mexican restaurant. Its delightful owner, Daniel (pictured above making Simon's burrito) proudly tells us that he is '100% Nicaraguense' but that he learnt to cook Mexican food from a wonderful Mexican chef years ago in Honduras.The food comes with an impressive array of extras - refried beans, lime, tomato and onion salsa, a minty and refreshing guacamole, hot chile sauce and tortilla crisps. This bizarre fruit which grows directly from the branches of the tree is called jicaro. Its seeds are sold in a powder form to mix up with milk and water into a satisfying drink. Waiting for the bus to Esteli one Sunday in a sweltering Leon, we ended up in the ropey, but air-conditioned, supermarket cafe. Simon picked out this rather large cake which I thought tasted overridingly of bubblegum. Three months into living in Nicaragua and this is the first cooked meal that we prepared together for just the two of us one weekend in Leon when we were home alone. There's some good mince in the supermarkets, which bodes well for impressing our Nica friends with shepherd's pie. There's a French baker in Leon and he does a good line in croissants and pan au chocolate.
I decided to made the most of a Canadian coffee roaster being in town to set up a coffee tasting session at Nick's to trial one of the cooperative's coffee brand's against the competition. Obviously it was far superior...if a little under-roasted. We're not about to drink it in this photo, we're smelling the coffee grounds.
We bumped into Simon's first language teacher from Lagartillo, Ermelinda, in Esteli the other weekend and were invited round for dinner to their place in Esteli. We thought the occasion warranted mum's flapjack and a bottle of red wine, both of which went down very well with Erme, her Colombian husband Luis and their son. Luis had recently returned from Colombia and had brought with him some roasted big-ass ants (one pictured on Simon's palm above). We had heard of them in Colombia but hadn't tried them. They were an odd experience. On first crunch they were crispy and a bit fried tasting but nothing more. As we continued to chew, a strong, burnt pork flavour emerged. I wasn't convinced but Simon ate a fair few.
We have now repeated the flapjack a few times for various friends and it's going down very well. It is particularly popular with Brenda and Candida, the cleaning ladies, at the hotel in Esteli. They requested the recipe, along with the lady who runs the pharmacy. We had a run through batch with them all.Sampling the finished product.
The local catholic music station in the north of Nicaragua organised a song contest and festival of traditional music held, at the baseball stadium in Estelí. We’ve been meaning to get ourselves to the stadium, but imagined it would be for a baseball game rather than a religious gathering. It was a little odd to be surrounded by so many people wearing their newly purchased merchandise – t-shirts featuring the holy virgin and the motto, ‘seeking the truth’. But it was also a nice family event with lots of food stalls, kids running around, and groups waiting to go on stage, largely dressed in cowboy hats clutching accordions or guitars. We entered the raffle, which was a bit pricey at around 80 pence per ticket, but we were excited at the prospect of winning the excellent prizes of either a bullock or a heifer. We weren’t entirely sure how we would tend to either of them in the hotel should we have struck it lucky, but we’re off to the countryside to visit a cow-less friend at the weekend and we knew she would have been delighted had we arrived with either. However, this all remained hypothetical. The first prize to be drawn for was the heifer and we didn’t win. The draw for the bullock wasn’t to be until later in the afternoon. A combination of the speakers being turned up far too loud, the singers warbling largely out of tune and the electricity intermittently cutting out, meant that we ran out of steam and left before the bullock draw. However, we did leave our hotel address on the raffle ticket stub, so just maybe a bullock will be coming our way some time this week.Sheltering from the sun in the stands with our English friend Jon
We concluded that although the event was an interesting spectacle, we’re more at home at the Sandinista gatherings with their black and red party flags, rousing revolutionary songs and a generous supply of rum and beer. A particularly passionate congregation cheering on their church's performance
Baseball is the national sport in Nicaragua. It's the game kids choose to play most often and there's Sunday leagues organised throughout the country. There's a number of Nicaraguan players dotted about the US major leagues and so this is where a lot of the spectating is done, via national and cable television. There is, however, a pro-league in Nicaragua in which four teams compete, playing in different cities around the country. I had a free Sunday so I decided to check out a game in Esteli where Oriental were playing Chinandega.
I had been here previously with Rachel for the Catholic radio song contest, and there were a lot more people on that occasion. This time around there were several hundred people sat on the concrete seats in the big iron stand. I paid $3 to get in, but received a free upgrade to the covered stand when the sun started shining on the seats that I was in. I chose to support Oriental, because they had bigger bellies and bigger mullets and a nice grey and red kit. As it turned out, most of the people from Esteli were supporting Chinandega and they were the better team. Four hours was quite a long time to watch baseball and most of the scoring seemed to come from mis-fielding and a bumpy infield. There was an impressive array of goodies on sale, including ice-cream, beer, crisps, chips, barbecued meat, sweets, gum and fags. I followed the game to the bitter end, which Oriental lost 15-11 by being worse than Chinandega. 
The winning team congratulated themselves and, for those who understand it (I just about do), the scoreboard in the background shows the story of the game.
