Estelí - Tabaccolandia

Next stop after Matagalpa is Estelí, just a 2 hours bus ride. Estelí is the cigar-capital of Nicaragua! And logically we do a cigar-tour. The process of making tobacco is really interesting and we are shown all the different stages of the process. Interestingly, many big tobacco companies buy cigars in Estelí and can decide how they want their cigars made (taste, size etc.) – lastly they’ll just put their label on the cigars and resell them for much more…

Watching the workers roll the cigars is a great experience – they’re so fast and precise! Of course, it’s not them that make the big money. They get paid 50 dollars a week, working 5 days for min. 8 hours, rolling up to 500 cigars daily…

They are even so nice and let us try to roll a cigar…

And here’s the well-known end-product…