Beer Geek Survival Guide: Nicaragua

After reading Oakes’ recent swill article, it’s difficult to berate the lowest-common-denominator line of beers from Compañía Cervecera de Nicaragua in quite the same fashion. Besides, once was sufficient.

The simple fact is, if you find yourself in this country for any extended period of time, you will eventually oscillate back and forth between Toña and Victoria as your go-to, you’ll seek out refrigerators advertising the lowest red-numbered temperatures (often, the fanciest technology for miles), and you might even be able to stifle a shudder at the sight of the Victoria Frost float during the Palo de Mayo celebrations in Bluefields. You’ll learn to make certain allowances here.

But occasionally you might wonder… what the hell did I do to deserve this?

Coastal Barrio in Bluefields (© Anneliese Schmidt)

Background: Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America, still viewed in many people’s minds as a site of Contra-related violence, subsistent farming, and drug interchange from Columbia. The Contras, at least, are left to history. Levels of unemployment on the Atlantic Coast can reach eighty percent or higher, while the more-developed tourism sections from Managua south still pale beside the tourism boom that is Costa Rica, its infrastructure-fueled neighbor to the south.

People come here, as they should, for the beaches, the artesanias, the tobacco and coffee farms, the active volcanoes, the colonial cities, the sport fishing, the mysteries of the Isla de Ometepe, and the slow amalgamation between Mestizo, Creole, and indigenous cultures lining the coast. They do not come here for the beer. No one comes here for the beer. And, like many things, the few places you can find a decent brew in this country are a consequence of outside influence.

Bluefields Dory (© Anneliese Schmidt)

BLUEFIELDS (R.A.A.S.): The best explanation I’ve heard of Nicaragua goes as follows: if you tell people in the U.S. that you’re heading down to Central America, they’ll give you a look (”seriously?”) that suggests you’ve chosen your destination poorly, as though you’re heading into the cultural backwoods. If you tell people in Central America that you’re going to Nicaragua, they’ll give you this same look.

“Why on earth would you want to go there?” this look asks.

You’ll receive this same look if you tell people in Nicaragua that you’re going out to Bluefields, and you’ll receive this same look if you tell people in Bluefields that you’re visiting any of the smaller communities along the coast. (It’s worth adding that, in the village my wife and I worked in, a close-knit Miskitu community of 500, we got this same look when we told them that we had to go back to the States.)

Making Bricks for a Tourism Center in Kahkabila (© Anneliese Schmidt)

Bluefields is a melting pot of about 50,000 souls, a city that’s debatably so, with a single-runway airport and few-story buildings (the Hotel Gran Oceano includes four floors, offering the finest rooftop view of downtown) and the kind of roads one writes home about. There’s a long history of English-speaking intervention here, from Britain to Jamaica, of once-successful fishing industries, and of godawful hurricanes. Accessible by plane or day-long bus/boat adventure from Managua, Bluefields is where tourists going to Corn Islands go when they get lost.

If you do happen to get lost here, as we did for six months, you may eventually tire of the campesino bars in the western barrios, the fast-thumping reggaeton in the downtown discotheques, and the Bryan Adams tracks on repeat (in Spanish, no less) appearing like familiar assailants from taxis and alleyways at all hours.

And eventually you’ll find Lala’s, or Midnight Dreams, or whatever this waterside Creole-centric bar might be called at that point (check the back of your Nicaragua handbook, where they put Bluefields), located a few blocks north of the municipal docks. It feels tucked away. You’ll see $3.50 bottles of Red Stripe being drunk by Jamaicans (a promising sign!), and – you will rub your eyes, because this is what people do when they try to scrub away memories of light lager consumption from their brains – empty bottles of Guinness Extra Stout sitting behind the bar!

And then you will ask for one, and they will tell you that they only import bottles for Christmas, and you’ll never again forget that this is how things work in Bluefields.

Main Coastline in San Juan del Sur (© Anneliese Schmidt)

SAN JUAN DEL SUR: Most tourists traveling into Nicaragua originate either in Managua’s international airport or coming north from Costa Rica. The Pacific side – a jagged chain of tourism destinations: San Juan del Sur, Ometepe, Granada, Masaya, León, etc. - tends to further justify that look people gave you when you mentioned Bluefields. You’ll actually see other gringos here. And supermarkets.

But the Spanish spoken is still frantic and mangled, single-room pulperias are still the norm, and the beer situation is anything but a welcome change. Even those fanciest of restaurants offer only the flimsiest of imported beer options: Heineken, Corona, Budweiser. Even (adding insult to injury) multiple types of Smirnoff Ice.

Hint: it's not a microbrewery making that smoke. (© Anneliese Schmidt)

San Juan del Sur should be your best shot at zeroing in on anything resembling hops or malts in this country, with its excesses of North American and European tourists toting surfboards and quick-flip real estate dreams, everyone operating under the shadow of an immaculate and seemingly misplaced five-star hillside resort. Instead, what you’ll find is more Toña and Victoria and Victoria Frost (and, occasionally, Brahva?) at what in Bluefields we referred to as “casino prices.”

All of this was true until The Irish House opened in July of this year. The product of an Irishwoman (Elisha) marrying a Nicaraguan (Roberto), this new boarding house and bar offers fine upstairs accommodations, Irish whiskey, and cold cans of Guinness at five bucks a pop (not much more than what it costs them to get it there). From the central market, after stocking up on bananos manzanos, cheap avocados, and $0.75 pineapples, walk just two blocks north and you’re there.

Alternately, there’s also a pulperia just south of the market that shows potential for getting in strange imports (though it hasn’t progressed far beyond Centenario rum from Costa Rica and Milwaukee’s Best), and we’ve got a friend down in San Juan del Sur with interest in starting up a microbrewery. Only time will tell here.

One of Granada's Vibrant Barrios (© Anneliese Schmidt)

GRANADA: The country’s epicenter for colonial architecture and an English-speaking expatriate population, Granada is a city that combines the best of both worlds: a multitude of internationally themed restaurants and bars, all within a walkable downtown, coupled to that oh-so Nicaraguan vibe of “I’m going to die tonight?” I kid. But things can be a bit sketchy in certain places, and you should keep your wits and sobriety about you. Take a marked taxi out to Charly’s Bar.

Colonial Architecture and Pigeons (© Anneliese Schmidt)

Sure, there’s one or two bars serving bottled Guinness at five bucks plus, but the crowd sucks, you’re surrounded by gringos, and you’re five hours away from San Juan del Sur. This is near the end of the article. You expect better by now.

Inflated food and drink prices, the market traffic, the constant barrage of people who are either selling cigarettes (I was trying to quit) or month-old cashews, the inane babble from college students who imagine that studying Spanish abroad says something about a person beyond their ability to cough up stupid amounts of cash and successfully board a plane… Ah, yes. Memories of Granada.

Charly’s Bar and Restaurant (”Charly Bar,” is all you need to say to most of the city’s taxi drivers) is the reason god invented guidebooks. Outside the city limits, past luminously painted barrios and down cobbled streets, this is the only place in Nicaragua that we ever encountered a tap handle. Unfortunately, it’s Victoria, and it wasn’t functional when we last visited. Bienvenidos a Nicaragua!

Of course, there’s authentic German food on the menu, cheap local spirits and interesting imported liqueurs, and some tallish, odd-looking orange cans. I have learned not to ask questions about certain things, and will only comment that their origins and means of importation are awesome and involve fire trucks. Charly’s Bar, offering tall, odd-looking orange cans of fresh, imported German hefeweizen (at $4) could, in certain extended-stay situations, quite possibly save one’s life.

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More pictures from our nine-month long trip to Nicaragua (and, occasionally, its fancypants neighbor to the south) are available here. If you have any additions to Nicaragua’s beer scene, please use the comment function below!

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