Central America - Nicaragua

Well we are half way through our Central America adventure. In total we will be visiting 4 countries here. We have been to 2 so far so are half way through.

Nicaragua again is quite like El Salvador and Honduras with the way of life, language, transport, and scenery.

While we were staying in one hostel Mrs Maynard met a girl called Ana who was from Spain. Mrs Maynard noticed that she was signing to somebody else in the hostel and realised that she was deaf. 


Mrs Maynard and Ana soon got chatting and Ana taught her and Tim all the signs for Central  America. Mrs Maynard has remembered them so she can come and show you when she gets back from her trip.

We also met a very nice young man called David on a bus to a new town called Granada. He spoke very good English as he taught it to children between the age of 12-13 years.
He was very kind and said that he would show us all around his town. It was so nice having a local person showing us around and telling us all about the area.

One shop we can across sold only hammocks.


Everyone there were really friendly, happy and very chatty. They showed us how they made the hammocks, what materials and threads they used. They had all different sizes and colours for sale.

Look there was even a hammock just the right size for me. I thought this was totally cool. A bear sized hammock. Perfect!

They even had a hammock that held 17 people, Yes that's right a whopping 17 adults would fit in here.

We think that it would be a great challenge to see if we could have fit the whole of Year 2 in here all in one go. What do you think? Mrs Maynard said there would be lots and lots of laughing and giggling going on.

Here is Mrs Maynard and Tim in it. Don't you think because the hammock is so big it makes them look tiny.

In the evening David took us out for some traditional Nicaraguan style food from a local market.

One thing that we did do which I know for a fact ALL of you would have enjoyed was we went to see how they make chocolate. In Nicaragua, like the rest of Central America, grow a lot of coffee bushes but also grow cocoa plants that produce cocoa beans that eventually turn into chocolate.

We all learnt a lot about this and got to make chocolate milk and our own chocolate bar at the end. Let me tell you it was yumm!


The stages that we went through to make chocolate milk drink were

1. The cocoa pod is plucked from the tree

2. The pod is broken open and the large seeds are removed. They are all sticky and covered in a white slimy gunk, that you can eat (it tastes yummy)

3. The seeds are left to dry out in the sun for 3 days, so that the slimey sweet gunk gets absorbed into the seed

4. Once the seeds are dry, the are then ready for roasting. The seeds are heated in a large clay pot until they crackle like popcorn being cooked. This only takes a few minutes.

5. The seeds then have their shells removed to reveal the inner raw bitter chocolate bean.

6. The bean is then crushed, by hand, for a very long time, until it turns into a paste. 

7. The paste is then mixed with warm milk, vanilla, cinamon and honey to make a delicious milk drink. 

8. Here i am with my finished chocolate bar. It had to be put into the fridge to cool down before i could eat it. It was yummy !

I hope that you have enjoyed leaning about the process of how to make chocolate. We learnt a lot and will definitly remember this day when we are back home munching on a bar.

Next stop is Costa Rica our 4th Central American country.

Take Care 

Buster

xx