After a Black Forest hike, there’s nothing better than recovering at a chalet’s lakeside terrace with an ice-cold beer. And here comes my $7.60 lunch: sauerkraut, pork, fried potatoes, salad, and pickled onions. German cooking that’s as authentic as anything I’ve had in Germany.
Germany? No, this is Nicaragua’s Black Forest, the Selva Negra. In the northern highlands beyond Matagalpa, its cooler climate is ideal for coffee-growing. Back in the 1880s, Nicaragua’s government invited German immigrants to settle and establish coffee plantations here.
Selva Negra estate is run by descendants of those immigrants. Eddy and Mausi Kühl still operate it as a farm and coffee plantation. Organically grown, their coffee is deeply aromatic, tastes wonderful with homemade chocolate cake, and costs $4 a pound. This is a fair trade venture, and the Kühls provide benefits such as free housing, medical care, and food for workers.
You could happily spend a vacation at Selva Negra. Along with the restaurant, there are hotel rooms ($50 for doubles), chalets, and bungalows for rent, and even a small chapel for marriage ceremonies. Most guests are nature-lovers, happy to wander the 14 marked forest trails either by foot or on horseback. The best time to tour the coffee plantation is during the harvest season, mid-November to mid-February.
But I’m not a nature lover.
My driver, Carlos, and Margi, his English-speaking sister, were keen to explore the wild wood: Fist-sized blue butterflies…the glimpse of a spotted creature called a Guardatinaja…the eerie shrieks of birds and monkeys… Margi suggested we try the Romantico Trail. According to the map, it’s not strenuous.
I’d forgotten that Germanic notions about “easy” paths are not the same as mine. I’d also forgotten that in folktales, Black Forest walks usually turn nasty. Well, the Romantico trail was almost as nasty as anything the Brothers Grimm dreamt up. It only confirmed my long-held belief that nature should always be avoided.
Churned into mud, the staircase-steep path soon turned treacherously slippery. Having to scrabble up it with the aid of roots, tree trunks, and Carlos’ arm didn’t do much for my dignity. The slightest rustle brought on panic attacks about snakes, scorpions, and ravenous beasts with claws and teeth.
Nicaragua’s Black Forest is cloud forest and only a fool comes here without hiking boots. (Or without bug repellent.) An oozing mess of black stuff, my sandals are now ruined beyond redemption. Plus, I’m spotted with mosquito bites and various other exotic forms of insect-borne pox.
Steenie Harvey
Roving Europe Editor (on loan to Nicaragua), International Living
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P.S. Reaching Selva Negra is no picnic either. Once you leave the agricultural township of Sebaco (watch for farmers carrying bristly brown piglets under their arms), the highway to Matagalpa transforms itself into the road to hell. Potholes become moon craters and life for the impoverished seems beyond desperate. This is a world of tin-roofed shacks where rivers serve as laundries and roadside hawkers sell live parrots tied fast to long poles. Most people survive on less than $2 a day.
With one arm held out, those little kids standing beside the road aren’t hitch-hiking. Note their spades…and that some craters have been filled in with dirt. They’re praying you’ll chuck them a coin in gratitude for their unpaid labor.
