As I sit in Miami International again waiting through another long layover with 3 hours to go, I thought now would be a great time to be productive 🙂

First I’ll let you know what’s coming. When I get home I’ll have a small chunk of photos and hours of video to go through. I said before I left I wanted to approach it from the perspective of taking you guys along and that’s how I treated it with I hope, success!

Overall it was a great trip. I enjoyed meeting new people,seeing some I hadn’t in years and it was really cool having frank conversations with a few industry and factory people.

The travel aspect, which I still have 5 hours left of (left Esteli at 10 Tampa time, 2.5 hour little bus trip, hour in the Managua airport, 3 hour flight to Miami,1.5 hours in customs lines, baggage then TSA again, 5 hour layover, 30 min flight to Tampa then 45 to home) sucks. But if you want to hit any of the Nicaragua destinations there’s no choice.

The Drew Estate compound is very nice. All the comforts of home, top notch chefs, great WiFi, perfect staff,etc. You’ll get a complete show and tell in the vids. Its not big but its perfect for groups of 15. What you can expect when you go is to use the compound as your home base. You’re there for three meals in between factories and farms, and the evenings go as late as you want. I only stayed up real late on Monday for a poker tournament and it was worth it but I got called a shark lol! But that’s better than ‘wraparound’ 🙂

Funny thing. Somehow in my head I thought we left on Thursday not Wednesday. I packed too much and was wondering what the schedule was for Wednesday since I hadn’t heard yet lol. But I had it right on my calendar told the wife the right pickup day so I don’t know what I was thinking.

I packed a good gear selection choice with only my 70-200 lens going unused and it wasn’t by my choice. One thing I was very disappointed about, although only because of what I do for a living, is we had zero free time, no exploration,nothing off script for a moment. I have done tours like this and you guys saw the hundreds of great shots I get. I might have a couple dozen this time. Not from lack of trying. Every time I tried to get a little away from a group or hang back a minute for a great shot I got yelled at to keep up, stay with the group, don’t wander, come on let’s go yada yada yada. I reached the point of screw it. From then on I only did some video.

Luckily only minor glitches gear wise. One of six camera batts died mysteriously. My USB card reader died. It read one 16gb card part of a 32 and was done. I found out my new Chromebook although great for a LOT of things, does not connect to an iPhone. So I had to uninstall most of my apps and still filled it completely with video. Luckily it was right at the end of the last night out so nothing of importance was missed.

I have a ton of video to go through and there will be a LOT I will have to dub over since everyone down there loves blaring music which means no internet video. Luckily there were still tons of opportunities to shoot and I got at least some of everything and a little of complete talks. Brian of Stogiereview was also filming some of the presentations in entirety so when you see him shooting in some of mine you can look for his videos also.

I’m sure most of you want to know what we smoked. Probably not what you are thinking. While there was a beautiful museum like display room of everything, the open box selection was normal. A box of Acid, Liga 9, Undercrown, couple Joya, Tabac Especial, Herrera Esteli (which I and others enjoyed the most) couple others I can’t think of right now. Each night a featured box was also offered such as L40, Ferel Flying Pig and T52. Which some definitely enjoyed but some of us just aren’t big Liga fans. Of course that’s not saying they aren’t great cigars it’s just not our taste preference.

The personal blending was great, it was 100% fun which I didn’t expect. We didn’t have to go through the BS of rolling them, we just did the research and experimentation with the leaves and wrote our instructions. From the test roll I really think ill love mine in several months time.

Even though I added 20 lbs to my pack for gear just for a specific photo it was well worth it. I made one mistake near the end of producing it but I think I can fix it no problem once I get home and edit it. But what was cool was having that gear there and taking some other special shots for people. Cigar Press was there and did a story on someone who I won’t name, and I donated my services to do a photoshoot there for it. I was also able to do some fun shots for a few people that wanted them along with some DE staff shots!

So what I’ll do is split the trip into 3 vids one for each day. It’ll be a couple days to start but it’ll be worth it! I’ll probably just put up a separate little slide show after the videos with the few photos I took.

It seems like I’ve been gone a week with a ton of work stuff already to catch up on. I am VERY glad the internet there was good broadband though, everyone was able to keep pretty up to date with emails when we got a few spare minutes. It did everything we needed to do, even good enough for me to do about a 5fps face time with the wife every night. We had to celebrate our 8th anniversary just before I left because it was yesterday and I was down there.

Anyway look for vids very soon and I hope my next 2.5 hours now goes very quickly because I REALLY miss home!