One rainy night I followed the Coco River, the longest river in Central America, marking the border between Nicaragua and Honduras.
On a wet and tired mule, I rode downriver from between El Tablazo on the Honduras side and Somotines on the Nicaragua side. I found some huts and asked the lady at one of them if she could cook me something – anything – to eat.
She agreed and said she had dinner in the outside oven in the back.
From the oven, I could smell a stew of plantains, corn, ayote, vegetables I did not know, and a roasted howler monkey.
Tired and hungry, I paid her for a meal and ate my fill, which I have to say was very good.
Nicaraguan cuisine is not all about eating howler monkeys, of course. But thousands of years of indigenous cooking blended with five hundred years of Spanish, African, and other styles has created something rather unique and wonderful.
