Estelí

Estelí sits at around eight hundred metres in the northern highlands and its business is tobacco: after the Cuban revolution, growers who left the island found the Jalapa and Estelí valleys had soil and climate suited to the leaf, and the city now holds dozens of factories rolling premium cigars that compete with the Cuban originals. Factory tours show the whole process, from sorting and fermentation through to rollers working in pairs at a bench. The other thing Estelí is known for is murals: walls across the city carry painted work, some from a mural movement that began in the 1980s and some recent. The city is a base for Miraflor and Tisey and a stop on the way to the Honduran border.

History

The first settlement, Villa Vieja, was founded in 1685 by Spaniards leaving Nueva Segovia, and was later replaced by the new settlement of San Antonio de Pavia, from which the city grew. In 1858 it was described as a little town on a small plain with a grist mill and wheat-growing country around it, and by 1920 it had 8,000 inhabitants (Wikipedia, Estelí).

Highlights

• Cigar factories - sorting, fermentation and hand rolling on the bench.
• Street murals - painted walls across the city centre.
• The tobacco valleys - fields and drying barns around the city.
• A working highland city - markets and streets with few visitors.

When to go

December to April for dry weather. Factories work weekdays and tours must usually be arranged a day ahead. Tobacco harvest runs roughly January to March, when the fields and barns are busiest.

What to expect

Factory tours need booking and some factories refuse visitors entirely. The city itself is workaday and has few conventional sights. Air quality in the tobacco processing areas is heavy. Murals are scattered and finding them takes walking.

Nearby

Miraflor lies north; Tisey-Estanzuela is south.

Key facts