Oh I have so many posts that are sitting in draft status waiting to be finished and published!! Here I thought I would have all of this time to blog every single day. This post is actually from two weekends ago. Spanish Aimee and I went to Monteverde and had an amazing time. I could come back and spend probably two more weeks in Monteverde alone. Apparently when I make these posts in draft status they don't post in the order published but in the order created, so if you are reading to follow my journey you might flip back through my posts to see if you missed any.
So coffee tour
As of this moment I have officially been to two different coffee tours. I feel a little schooled in the art of coffee creation with the exception that one of the employees at the second plantation negated one of the facts that I learned...I think that's the correct word, I've always wanted to use it.
The Don Juan coffee plantation was really neat. It is a smaller plantation that also handles cocoa and sugar cane. They don't grow the sugar cane or the cocoa beans in this plantation but they process them. It was interesting to know that the cocoa is actually Costa Rican grown and Don Juan purchases it to help support Costa Rican cocoa growers. Muy interesante. I don't remember where the sugar cane is from but I don't think it's from Costa Rica. When we did the tour the lady took us to a little area with cocoa beans drying and pointed to these two plants and said here is the coffee plantation. We laughed.
The Don Juan plantation offers a 3 in 1 tour, which includes information about the coffee plantation, the cocoa and sugar cane processes. It started off with a little introduction about the ox carts. Previous to this outing we read in class a text about the tradition behind the ox carts so it was neat to finally see one. We also rode on the back of it, which was painful due to the canyoning trip earlier that day. I haven't uploaded the pictures or videos from Canyoning yet. We also met Don Juan himself.
With the tour you learn about the process of how the coffee beans are grown, which is really interesting. They use a portion of the seed to fertilize the plants. The other plantation said they use another part for coffee paper. Then you walk through the plantation to see the plants that are currently growing. We also saw the old school machines that were originally used as opposed to the current machines. There is a picture of me using the mortar and pestle that was used to remove a layer of the bean a long time ago. It was the women's job apparently. Then you go to the roasting area and learn about the different levels of beans. It was here that I fell in love with dark roast. Yum!
The portion of the sugar cane has two people attempting to crank the juice from the sugar cane. Then you get to drink it. I think they said that you can make moonshine from this. Next is the cocoa part. Here the tour guide made fresh brownies and hot coco from the cocoa beans. She said that milk chocolate is not as healthy for you as straight cocoa chocolate. Interesting.
There are a lot of interesting coffee and cocoa facts that I learned, but you need to try the tour yourself so I won't spoil the ending. I will say that my favorite fact is that they plant the coffee plants in plastic bags in pairs because they will compete with each other to grow faster and taller.
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