Nicaragua

Tobacco Town: A Week in Estelí, Nicaragua

Workation

Anyone who’s followed me or knows me in person knows that I love cigars. I won’t go into my personal history with cigars, which has been a life-changing passion going back to about 1997; that is another story for a different blog. When I had an opportunity to do a one week ‘workation’ in 2024, it was my passion for the leaf that took me to Nicaragua. For the last couple of years, I can take one week per year and work remotely in addition to my annual paid time off. The first year I went to Guatemala, and this (second) time to Nicaragua. It’s essential that I do the workation in a time zone that roughly lines up with Vancouver’s. I’ll probably explore most of Central America this way.

But where in Nicaragua? Granada was the obvious choice, as it is so charming, but I decided to go to a less picturesque destination: Estelí.

Estelí is not a tourist destination; It is a regular working town in central Nicaragua that is famous for growing some of the best tobacco in Central America. At least half of the population of Estelí works in the cigar industry in one way or another. I couldn’t get an accurate count on how many cigar farms or factories there were in the area. I managed to find about 30 online but I was told that there was probably twice as many.

Estelí seemed like a good choice. It’s famous for producing something that I love and, aside from that, it doesn’t really have any other sights or attractions that would distract me from my work. (There are some nearby hikes, but that’s it.)

Arrival in Nicaragua

I flew into Managua and then had to make my way to Estelí. Managua is the closest airport to Estelí and the only way there is by vehicle. There are buses, but they’re slow. I was arriving in Estelí from Vancouver via Mexico City, where I had spent the night, so by the time I would arrive in Nicaragua it would be Saturday afternoon and I wanted to arrive in Estelí before it got dark. So I arranged for a car.

I found a driver online – Mr. Ow of Mr Ow Nica Travel – who offers driving services around the country and asked him if he would make this drive for me. He said he would. I wholly recommend him he was an excellent driver and very professional. It was also nice to make the drive from Managua to Estelí in a car so that I could enjoy the scenery as well as ask Mr. Ow about life in Nicaragua. It wasn’t a super picturesque drive, but it was nice to see some fields of green and donkeys pulling carts.

Growing up, the only time I heard anything about Nicaragua was on the news, and it was always violence and political upheaval, and American-born news reporters with no Spanish accent suddenly pronouncing the name Nicaragua as though they were raised in the heart of Managua. (“Nee-Ka-rrrá-Gua”)

While it’s a bit of a stereotype from Nicaragua it’s also true that it was violent and had political upheaval and lots of American political meddling. The country was under a series of dictatorships and revolutions from the late 1930s until the 90s (Somoza, Sandinistas, Contras), with a war and a devastating earthquake on top of it all. In the 1990s, when it started to re-establish itself as a stable state, it was decimated by terrible hurricanes. It’s only really since about the mid 2000s that it’s got on its feet. Or did it?

While there isn’t any active war, Nicaragua struggles with democracy and dictatorships to this day. Political participation is limited, and the current president has been in power for 23 years across two different periods. During his second period, he removed term limits from the constitution and recently made his wife vice president. When I am visiting countries with tricky governments, I try not to ask people too much about the local politics for fear that they or I get in trouble. To the extent that locals talked about politics with me on this trip they didn’t seem happy with the system and spoke about it in hushed tones.

Nicaragua is one of the safer countries in Central America, but it’s still not considered safe. I felt completely safe the entire time that I was there, but I don’t know if that’s a universal experience.

Estelí

We got to Estelí, it also wasn’t that picturesque, but it would be my home for the next week.

Estelí has a population of approximately 120,000. I find that shocking because it felt like a small town, but I gather that I was staying in the centre and that there is more of the city perhaps spread out. The area that I stayed in felt old-ish. There were some cobblestone-type streets and single-story colonial buildings painted in bright colours and at least one square with an old churches.

It looks lovely right? And it was pretty. Not as pretty as Antigua or Granada, but it did have many of the elements of an attractive Central American colonial town. What it didn’t have was things catering to tourists. On one hand this was great; I felt like Estelí was a completely authentic experience. On the other hand, it wasn’t an easy place to spend a week in. Very few people spoke English, so I had to rely on my rudimentary Spanish. Finding vegetarian food was almost impossible. Most nights I would ask people to make me a bean and vegetable burrito. And one night I just had a virgin piña colada and a cigar for dinner. There wasn’t a plethora of cute little cafes with free Wi-Fi like you would have in a more touristy place like Antigua, but there were some. There was one very picturesque little cafe (Coffee Lovers Estelí) that did have free Wi-Fi and wasn’t too far from my hotel and there was a place selling smoothies and there were and there were one or two patios to sit on.

Sometimes when I drive through countries from one destination to another I will pass by a town or small city of no particular note and I’ll wonder what life is like in a place like that; just a regular town with no real attractions. Estelí was that experience. People got up and they went to work and they hung out in the park in the evening when it was hot and then they went home. Men walked around wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots and jeans and nobody seemed particularly interested in displaying the sights or history of their town. Every morning, a siren went off at about 5:00 AM signalling to people that it is time to start work. I used this as my signal that I should do likewise.

I stayed the Hotel Los Arcos, which is probably the nicest hotel in the centre of the city and I booked myself into the biggest room. I figured, since I’m going to be there doing work, I may as well have some space. It wasn’t ideal for work, lacking any sort of a desk or table. I spent most of my working days sitting on a wooden bench working at a coffee table in the common areas, smoking cigars. That was great, cigar-wise. The place was very cigar friendly. And while the staff didn’t speak a word of English, they were very kind and we exchanged small conversations.

*My hotel and, on the right, where I worked most days*

I did get violently ill for about out two days during my time in Estelí following an attempt to eat a salad ordered from a takeout window at a taco shop. I think that was a mistake. And that put a bit of a damper on things, but I was still able to tend to my work and enjoy my cigars.

And the cigar is really where the highlight of Estelí. I could smoke anywhere, which was a treat, but more importantly I had arranged to visit some farms and factories while I was there. It is possible to arrange for a tour in some cases to visit certain farms and factories there, but they generally don’t do them for individuals. Fortunately, my law firm is one of the sponsors of the Caribbean Cigar Celebration, an annual cigar event in Vancouver, and I used that as my way two reach out to these places. Only three factories got back to me, but that was enough. While I was there, I visited Las Villas, Rocky Patel, and Plasencia. I know that if you don’t know anything about cigars these names won’t mean anything to you, and that’s okay. I will write separate posts about these visits so they’re easy for people to skip if they’re not interested. But for me it was thrilling and one of the more unique trips that I’ve had.

My days in Estelí, apart from visiting farms and factories, were spent with a morning stroll, an eight or so hours of work, and an evening out for dinner, another walk, and a cigar, seeing who I could meet and what I could see along the way. Not exciting, but pleasant.

Would I recommend that people go to Estelí? Not unless you are a huge cigar fan and very excited to learn more about the process of growing cultivating and rolling cigars. Otherwise carry on to Granada or one of the other more touristy regions of Nicaragua.

Moving On

I did go to Grenada on my last weekend, and it was excellent and provided me with all the touristy comforts that Estelí lacked, but the highlight was visiting those tobacco farms and cigar factories, which reaffirmed and revitalized my passion for cigars.

Choose your own adventure! Want to Read about my visits to Las Villas, Rocky Patel, and Plasencia? Click your choice. Want to jump ahead to picturesque Granada? Click here.

Nicaragua

Two Days in Colourful Granada

Leaving Estelí for Granada

I left Estelí, Nicaragua early on Friday morning. I left the way I came, in a private care instead of on the bus. Friday was a working day for me, and I couldn’t afford to spend half of it in transit, so I hired a driver. The trip took about 2.5 hours. Not a bargain, price-wise, but worth it

Arriving in Granada, I was immediately charmed. This was the colourful city I’d seen in pictures, and it was the city in which I had planned to spend my entire week, before the lure of cigars and tobacco farms took me to Estelí. We arrived in Granada at about 8:00 AM. I would leave two days later. Two days was enough time in Granada.

*main square as seen from my hostel window*

The Poshest of Hostels

I was staying at the Selina Hostel (since changed its name to Socialtel Granada); it was an absolute delight. It’s one of those fancy hostels that feels more like a hotel than than it does just a regular hostel (a poshtel). It is pricier, but you can’t argue with the quality. I had booked a private room, and it was gorgeous. The common areas were full of people hanging out, drinking smoothies and beer, planning day trips to volcanoes, and chit chatting in aesthetically appealing surroundings. As a side note, I did plan to do a day trip to a volcano but it just wasn’t happening while I was there due to volcano activity so I just hung out in the town.

I spent Friday morning sitting on the patio in front of the hostel having a cigar and working on my laptop. With work done, I went out to explore for the weekend.

Wandering Granada

Grenada is one of those places that doesn’t really have tourist attractions per se, it’s really that the city itself is the attraction. It is a gorgeous Spanish colonial town with the oldest architecture dating back nearly 500 years. The buildings are brightly painted, and the streets are cobblestoned. In the centre is a leafy square presided over by a tall bright yellow church.

I know, it’s a lot of photos, but its is just so pretty

It has an active street life, with markets, people playing dominoes, food and drink vendors, add a selection of horses and donkeys.

The central market was an explosion of colours, smells, and fruity goodness.

It is an ideal place for wandering with no destination.

The only downside to Grenada was that it was blisteringly hot and humid. It was hot in Estelí but in a comfortable sort of way. It was so hot when I was in Granada in February that at certain points I felt like I couldn’t see. No matter, the city had an ample assortment of charming cafes and breezy courtyards that I could sit in to take respite from the heat and drink a refreshing beverage or a coffee.

And that’s basically what I did in Granada: I wandered around, I looked at buildings, I took pictures, and I had and I had tasty (non-alcoholic) beverages.

*smoothies, coffee, and a virgin passion fruit colada*

One of the great things about being Granada was that there was a variety of food. It reminded me a lot of Antigua, Guatemala in the sense that it really does cater to tourists and so it has charming cafes with good assortments of vegetarian food. I was in heaven I was able to have vegetarian dishes and nice salads without getting sick. The downside of this was Granada is not particularly cheap. You’re going to pay almost Canadian prices for the pleasures of those lovely cafes. But I was fine with it.

Smoking Cigars in Granada

Of course I smoked cigars. There was one small cigar factory in Granada: Dona Elba. It’s tiny, as their main factory is in Estelí, but there were people in there rolling cigars and cigars were for sale. I made a point of going there and tried a couple of their locally rolled cigars, each of which was only OK. I sat in a rocking chair in their shop area and smoked this very unfortunately named cigar when I was joined by the tired wife of a cigar curious tourist who sat down to talk to me. It was one of those conversations that started normal but then took a turn when this woman, who was from America, began telling me about her COVID conspiracy theories and how Muslims are ruining Europe. Awkward. I obviously don’t agree with her theories and there’s just no point in debating some people. At that point I miss being in Estelí where almost no one spoke English.

*A nice little factory with unremarkable (and one unfortunately named) cigars*

One other note on cigars, don’t buy any here unless it is from a proper cigars store (and even then be careful); Granada was full of egregious fake cigars – not just fake Cubans, but fake non-Cubans, like Padron, Fuente. Nasty looking things, some with beetle holes.

In the evenings I sat outside enjoying the less hot air and smoking cigars, well the people from the nearby hostels marauded about in search of drinks.

It was all perfectly pleasant and was an excellent end to my time in Nicaragua.

Heading Home

I flew home via Mexico City where I had a ten-hour overnight layover. Normally, when flying through Mexico City I’ll go into the city, but I had no desire to go in the middle of the night sleep couple hours and come back to the airport, so I booked a ‘room’ at a little pod hostel just outside of the airport. (izZzleep.) Literally outside the door of the airport and up a flight of stairs. It was my first time staying in one of these little space age pods and I loved it. Great use of my time and money.

Nicaragua was a success I felt fulfilled and rejuvenated.

My next trip would keep me in the Americas: a short jaunt to southern California.

Nicaragua

At Home with Plasencia Cigars in Estelí, Nicaragua

After Las Villas and Rocky Patel, my next cigar factory visit was Plasencia. I was delighted. I had only learned of Plasencia the previous year when I was working in Antigua, Guatemala. The proprietors of the best lounge in Antigua (Antigua Cigars) told me the story of the Plasencia family and introduced me to their cigars. They have been in regular rotation for me ever since.

The Plasencia family started out in the industry in the mid 1800s as tobacco farmers in Cuba after the Plasencia patriarch immigrated there from the Canary Islands. They left during he revolution in the early 1960s and moved their operation to Nicaragua. In the 1970s the turbulence in Nicaragua caused them to move to Honduras where they started making cigars for other brands. In the 1990s they returned to Nicaragua and became one the of the most famous and prolific growers and producers (still for other grands) of the cigars outside of Cuba. In 2017, the family decided to start producing cigars under their own name and the Plasencia brand of cigars was born. They are excellent cigars, the Alma Fuerte being my favourite.

I love how they have been in the business for generations and how they have innovated to grow certified organic tobacco and developed way to grow the crops with less water. They are committed to environmental practices. I should say here that no was is paying or asking me to write this. I’m just a fan.

So I was delighted when I was invited to tour the Plasencia factory in Estelí.

I walked to the factory from my hotel. Long and hot, but manageable. I didn’t want to deal with taxis.

I entered the impressive yellow building and was met with my host.

He took me on a tour of the factory. I won’t go through the steps involved or how this experience enlivened my already deep-rooted passion for cigars, as I have done that in the Las Villas and Rocky Patel posts. I was walked through the same, incredible process of cigar fermentation, rolling, aging, testing, and finishing. All by hand, as it has been done for centuries.

The family’s history is told in a series of photos and the story displayed on a wall after entering the building.

A few things surprised me about Plasencia. It isn’t just a company where these people work; they pride themselves on being a responsible employer. (Take note, corporations.) They pay a good wage, they provide health care onsite, they provide free pre-school for the children of workers, they grow food and use it to supply meals to their workers…it was apparent that this is a company that cares. I usually cringe when I hear an employer calling its workplace a family, but there was a true sense of that here. The walls were lined with quotes from writers and thinkers like Emerson and there were displays about the Plasencia baseball team and about the importance of mental health. It was impressive, and not what I expected. They even make a point of employing blind people in certain jobs where the task can be done by touch. I came in as a fan of the cigars and left as a fan of that and their corporate culture.

The tour ended in their onsite cigar lounge / café / bar, where I had a coffee and cigars and continued to chat with my host.

I left, with a nice gift bag, and my host insisted on driving my back to my hotel. (He thought it was crazy I had walked.) When he turned on his truck, 1980s Madonna blasted from the speakers. “The radio?” I asked curiously. “No. It is a CD,” he replied and said how much he liked Madonna. Full of surprises, down to the final moments.

These three cigar factory visits were incredible. I felt even more zealous about this thing that I love and that has, truly, shaped so much of my life. It was also a reminder of the kindness and generosity of cigar people and how, despite being strangers, we connect over this shared passion.

What a great way to end my week in Estelí. The next day I would leave Estelí for Granada.

Nicaragua

Farm to Factory with Rocky Patel

During my week in Estelí, Nicaragua, and the day after my visit to the Las Villas cigar factory I had the privilege of visiting the Rocky Patel farm and factory.

Rocky Patel is a brand started in the mid 90s by a Hollywood lawyer named Rakesh “Rocky” Patel who became passionate about cigars and sold his law practice to start a cigar company. This is a story that is close to my heart. Today Rocky Patel is one of the best known non Cuban brands in the world.

Factory

The people at Rocky Patel were unbelievably generous with their time. I was met by a representative of the company, a girl named Gissell who spoke excellent English, and she took me on a tour of the factory. She walked me through the entire process from rolling the cigars to aging them, banding to boxing them. I was familiar with the process, and it was fresh in my mind for having visited the factory yesterday, but I appreciated seeing how the Rocky Patel factory operates.

It was a big operation, but like all cigar factories, things are pretty simple. It’s a room with long wooden tables, divided into sections, kind of like cubicles in a library, and a person sits at each one and does their job. There’s the person who bunches the tobacco, creating the blend, the person who rolls the tobacco, the person who takes the cigars and puts them into a wooden cigar press to help them hold their shape, the person who applies the wrapper (which is the outside leaf), and the person who takes each cigar and puts it into a little machine that puffs air through it to check to see if it is rolled correctly. If the cigar is rolled too tight you can’t smoke it easily, and if the cigar is rolled to loosely it burns too quickly and too hot. The man who does the testing keeps track of whose cigars or not meeting the standard.

rollers

We also visited the room where women de-vein the tobacco leaves, the and the room where men are sorting the cigar leaves into bundles to make the blends, weighing them, and keeping the records. Everything is done by hand. Pen and paper.

The factories are warm. There are fans but you can’t have air conditioning blowing on the tobacco. Tobacco is a sensitive product that needs to be kept warm, but not too warm; and humid but not too humid.

The atmosphere of the room is nice. People seem to be having a good time, or as much as you can while working. A lot of them have headphones in but others are chatting with each other as they roll cigars, but they are working quickly. A perfect marriage of speed and precision is desirable. I tried rolling a cigar once and I know first-hand that it is not as easy as they make it look.

After the cigars are rolled, they are aged in bundles on shelves for anywhere from a few months to up to a year before they are boxed and sold.

When it is time for the cigars to be boxed, there is someone whose job it is to separate the cigars into different shades of brown, to ensure that when you buy a box of cigars there is a uniform colour of the cigars in the box. This is purely for aesthetics. The lighter coloured cigars go with the lighter coloured cigars and the darker with the darker coloured cigars. In Cuba, it is said that they separate the cigars into 40 different shades of brown. I don’t know if that’s accurate or if it’s true in Estelí, but the man who was doing the colour organizing certainly had a lot of different shades of brown on the table in front of him.

The cigars are banded, again, by hand, and put into boxes for distribution and sale.

Just as with the day before, I felt amazed by the level of work that goes into making each cigar and how little it has changed over the centuries.

When the tour of the factory was finished, we were joined by Luis, a former lawyer himself, and we took a drive out to the farm.

Farm

This was a new experience for me. I had visited a tobacco farm in Cuba, but at the time the plants had been harvested so it wasn’t much to see. Being at the Rocky Patel farm in Estelí, I was giddy with excitement. It was stunning. The header image on this post is a view of the field. Bright green plants against a clear blue sky. It looked like heaven.

I wandered to the fields and took pictures and gently caressed leaves like a real weirdo.

Another thing I hadn’t seen before, was tobacco flowers. These are the flowers that grow on the tobacco plant. They’re pink! I had no idea.

Right near the fields, were large barns where the tobacco goes after it’s harvested.

Once the leaves are harvested, they go into the barn where they are hung on wooden rods high up into the barns rafters. When they’re hung up, they’re green and as they dry, they turn brown. The racks of leaves are rotated to ensure that they all get uniform humidity and exposure. As with every other aspect of cigar production, this is all done by hand. Women string the tobacco leaves into long garlands; men take the tobacco leaf garlands up into the rafters and hang them over the wooden beams. The barn smells incredible.

They told me that once a year they have fancy dinners in the barn where they bring in a large table and eat and drink surrounded by tobacco. I tried unsuccessfully to wrangle an invitation.

We then visited the building where the tobacco was put into, effectively, big piles, where it ferments for up to a year. The tobacco must be kept at a very stable state of humidity and temperature, and it is monitored constantly.

Finally, and a bit out of sequence, we visited the greenhouses where the little tobacco seedlings start their lives. Future cigars. I have never been so excited to visit a nursery.

The people at Rocky Patel were so wonderful. Explaining to me the entire process, tolerating my ceaseless enthusiasm, and not laughing too hard at me when I tripped walking in the field and landed in a muddy creek. At the end of the visit, they gave me a small gift box with an assortment of their cigars. There’s no people like cigar people.

*me, Gissell, and Luis. I didn’t get the pink shirt memo*.

I felt so lucky to have been able to visit these two factories. An at the time that I visited Rocky Patel I thought that it would be the second of two factory visits that I would make; but that afternoon I got an e-mail arranging for me to visit Plasencia the next day, which would be my final day in Estelí.

Wandering North

Tobacco Town: A Week in Estelí, Nicaragua

Workation

Arrival in Nicaragua

Estelí

Moving On

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Workation

Arrival in Nicaragua

Estelí

Moving On

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Leaving Estelí for Granada

The Poshest of Hostels

Wandering Granada

Smoking Cigars in Granada

Heading Home

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