Great Lakes Brewing News Archive

Los Testigos de Cerveza

Originally Published: 12/97

By: Bill Metzger

- Part 11 -

Some Central Americans gauge their level of machismo by the number of empty beer bottles piled on their table. The more bottles, the greater the consumptive ability and manliness of the drinkers seated in front of them. In some bars, the practice is so common that a waitress won't carry empty bottles away until the beer drinkers request it. The truly manly, once the bottles are removed, will then turn to whiskey, Flor de Caña (flower of (sugar) cane) being a commonly known brand.

The four travelers were not a particularly macho group, however, and while beer bottles were beginning to pile up on their table, they avoided the distillation stage. The beer bottles, moreover, signified an enormous relief at having survived the bus ride from the Nicaraguan border, and a need to spend the black market money they had smuggled into the country. The comfortable quartet sat in a small bar on the outskirts of Somoto, a small town at the end of the bus route.

Suicide Ride

Medio looked up from his rice and beans. "How close were we to tipping over in that bus?"

The BigGuy, usually loquacious, was lost in a reverie of thought, Capn in the enjoyment of his cerveza. Nuco put down his fork, used the last tortilla to wipe the bean juice off his plate, and ate. "I don't know," he said, his mouth half full of food, "but every time we hit one of those curves‹mmmff‹I thought it was all over." He picked up a bean that had fallen off his plate and onto the table and stuffed it into his mouth.

Capn put down his cerveza. "Personally, I think we would have been safe if the bus tipped over. We would have been cushioned by all the bodies around us."

"There were people on all sides," Medio agreed.

"I had no place to fall," Capn added.

"I thought the driver was going to get pushed out of the bus there were so many people on it," Nuco said.

Capn finished his cerveza and placed the bottle amongst the growing galley of empties. "He couldn't. He had a dead bolt riveted to his door so he was held in place."

"I was yelling for people to lean left or right every time the bus hit a curve," Nuco said. "The soldiers were ready to jump off at any minute."

The discussion was a therapeutic debriefing for the group. After almost tipping over a curb before it was even en route, the bus from the Honduran/Nicaraguan border had begun a slow voyage down Central American Highway 1, wobbling back and forth like an overweight penguin. Adding to the danger, CA1 had been constructed with banked curves, which, while helping keep high velocity autos on the road, had almost toppled the slow moving bus. Fortunately, the soldiers lightened the load shortly after the bus departed the border, disappearing into an encampment along the road. As other passengers got off at the frequent stops, the bus's hyper wobble was transformed into a low-grade lean.

"If they wanted to do a better job, they certainly could have," Capn observed, waving for the waitress to bring him another cerveza. "At least I hope they could. If they couldn't, I feel sorry for them."

Tales of Savagery

"How about the Limey?" the BigGuy asked, awakening from his reverie. "Did you see him get on the bus?" Without waiting for a response, he continued. "He tells me, 'This bus is packed.' And as we all can testify, buses can get packed, much more than anything that has been seen in the States. So much so that I don't think Americans can relate to it."

"Real overcrowding," Capn agreed wholeheartedly.

"So we get one guy‹a Limey‹he says fuck it, I'm going to get on," the BigGuy continued. "There's a woman standing there with a small infant in her arms. He goes up, takes his hand and shoves the infant's face into the mother, pushes her away, and gets into the bus. The baby was preventing him from getting on. He wanted the baby's face."

"Real overcrowding and savagery," Capn elaborated.

"Where was that?" Nuco said, "I don't remember any Limey."

"That was in Turkey," the BigGuy replied. "That happened in Turkey."

There was a moment of confused silence, until Medio, who had accompanied the BigGuy on his Turkey tour, asked, "How do the people on this trip compare with the Turks, Senor?"

"Friendlier. Of course, you're not wearing shorts this time. I think that upset the Turkish locals." The BigGuy finished his cerveza, found a spot for the empty bottle and glanced at his watch. "Oh, that bus ride tomorrow morning is going to be great. Four o'clock in the morning and we gotta push our way through people again."

"Yeah, well, at four in the morning I don't know if we're going to see a lot of people," Medio said hopefully.

"The carabinieri around here seem much less threatening than in Turkey," the BigGuy observed. "They seem to be part of the community." As the next round of cervezas were delivered and paid for, the travelers all nodded in agreement. The BigGuy may have temporarily abandoned his US citizenship to become a Canadian citizen, then gone into an inexplicable meditative silence, but he had returned from both with his acute observational powers intact.

Border Post Paranoia

While the travelers continued pondering their cervezas, Nuco took out a map and opened it on the dirt floor of the bar. Emboldened by the beer and still smarting at his earlier border station abandonment of the Revolution, he pointed to a small town on Nicaragua's Atlantic coastline. "We got all this money now, I say we go to Bluefields."

"Where's that?" Medio asked.

"It's on the Miskito coast. It's a port town. They speak English."

"How are we going to get there?" Medio asked, looking at the map. "There aren't any roads to that side of the country."

"We go to Costa Rica, rent a fishing boat and head up the coast. On the open sea again!"

"Isn't Bluefields where the CIA mined the harbor?" the BigGuy asked.

"Yeah, but that was more than a year ago. They've cleared that all away."

"Hmm..." began the BigGuy, signaling a move into fast-think. "I'm not sure that all this Nicaraguan dinero is going to do us much good in Costa Rica."

"What mines?" Medio asked.

Nuco folded the map. "Our government was pissed off that the Europeans were still trading with Nicaragua after we imposed an embargo. They were using Bluefields as a port, so the CIA mined the harbor there."

"Not the kind of harbor I'd want to ride a fishing boat into," the BigGuy said.

"That was over a year ago," Nuco insisted.

"Let's put it to a vote," Medio suggested. "Who's for Bluefields?" Only Nuco raised his cerveza.

"Looks like a no-go this trip, Senor," the BigGuy said quickly.

"You guys are paranoid," Nuco replied, disgusted.

The post election democracy sat quietly for a while, drinking and digesting their rice, beans, and newfound paranoia. Finally, the BigGuy finished his cerveza and stood up. "Esta noche, mis amigos, es muy cansado." The rest of the group drank up, ready to look for lodging. It was good to see the BigGuy revert to his Berlitz tape Spanish again.

Pension Parsimony

A walk through town revealed that all the pensiones in town were filled. One pension manager mentioned another place outside of town, and the BigGuy, his language skills rising to the challenge, volunteered to check it out. His three companeros sat on their luggage on a dusty street corner in the middle of town.

As tired as the street corner gringos felt, it was impossible not to notice how nicely people treated them. Virtually everyone who walked by their new base camp smiled and said hello. One muchacho, who lived nearby, even offered them a place to stay in his home. Counting on the BigGuy to score a couple of rooms, the tired trio declined.

The BigGuy returned from his quest full of vigor. "They love me here!" he enthused.

"Did you find a place to sleep?"

"No luck there, but they love me here, Señor!

"No rooms I bet," Nuco said.

"Must have been the huge influx of people that took that last bus into town," Capn surmised.

"You know, I think I'm going to run for mayor of Somoto!" the BigGuy suddenly declared.

His three companeros looked at him, puzzled. "I don't get it," Medio said. "First you abandon your country because you're afraid the Nicaraguan people will string you up, and now you want to run for mayor?"

"I hope you make more pensiones a part of your platform," Capn added, standing and dusting himself off.

Despite the cynicism, the BigGuy's optimism was borne out as within minutes a pension employee arrived to say that the owner invited them to sleep on his living room floor. Not relishing the street and too tired to begin the campaign for the BigGuy's newly declared mayoral candidacy, the travelers accepted the offer.

Next issue, more overcrowding, Nicaraguan cerveza, and talking shit.

Not long ago‹about ten years‹four travelers set forth on a voyage south of the border. While none of the voyagers journeyed to Central America for the same reasons, each held two common loves: travel and beer. Good beer, or so they thought in those heady days launching the craft beer revolution. The following series will tell the story of how those individuals‹Nuco, Medio, Capn, and the BigGuy‹evolved into one of the most well traveled, irreverent bands of craft beer lovers on earth, los Testigos de Cerveza.