Tastes Just Like Green Beans

Written 01/20/09--pictures to come soon!

Monteverde is definitely my favorite place we have been so far. It is a bizarre little town, where they have steadfastly refused to pave any of the roads. (Literally, you can tell where Santa Elena ends and Monteverde begins because the pavement abruptly stops in the middle of the street without rhyme or reason.) They make their own cheese and ice cream and they grow their own coffee. The winds are as tumultuous as I have ever seen, and I am saying that having worked right on Lake Michigan during a Chicago winter. They have hiking, and virgin cloud forests, canopy tours, rafting, and more. And who am I to argue with the Quakers? No one.

So we agreed that the reason we had come there in the first place was the cloud forest and we each picked one other activity. You already heard about my pick and our trek to the cheese factory - the next day we embarked on a tour of Monteverde’s co-op coffee plantation. We chose this tour in particular because it’s a non-profit co-op owned and run by the locals. We got picked up and driven down yet another not paved winding road to the bottom of the mountain. I have never seen anything like it. We were surrounded on all side by miles and miles of trees. The only way to try and do it justice is to say that I felt the same way that an ant might feel like if it accidentally lost it’s balance and tumbled into the broccoli display at the supermarket. There were that many densely packed trees.

We arrived at the coffee farm and met Juan Francisco. He was the coffee farmer for the day and was one of the most adorable old men I have met of late. He had to be at least 70 and everything he said was translated to us by our guide. Juan bought the farm 52 years ago from his brother who had already planted coffee. He showed us the baby coffee plants and then the huge coffee trees and we were put to work right away and picked two trees full of the ripe red coffee cherries. You can squeeze the raw coffee cherry and two raw coffee beans will pop out, so naturally we were curious as to what the cherries taste like. Coffee? Cherries? Neither my friends, they taste just like raw green beans. I promise.

After our time on the farm, we headed to the plant where the process the coffee. They have a machine that squeezes the raw beans out and then they run them through water and collect in a bin. They spread them out in the sun and leave them to dry in the sun for 11 days. On the 11th day they put them in bins and keep them there until they are ready to roast. When it’s roasting time they take the hulls off (looks like a peanut skin) and put them through their roaster for different lengths of time depending on whether they are making a light roast or a dark roast. Then they package up those little beans and sell them to tourists like us.

We got to taste each of the kinds they make and thus ended our tour de café. We almost had another lost and found moment when we left a water bottle at the coffee place, but the guy at the hostel called them for us and they kindly brought it back. While talking to the guy at the hostel we found out he was Juan Francisco’s grandson, so I guess it really is a small world after all. That, and we have met approximately 10 people who live in Chicago as well as a lady who grew up in Pittsfield (the town next to Dalton where Matt grew up for those blog readers to whom Pittsfield means nothing).

On Monday we woke up at 5:30 am to catch a 6:30 bus to San Jose with Mario. This time, we were fully prepared with Dramamine and both promptly slept through all five hours of it. We got to San Jose, walked to another bus station, bought tickets to Puerto Viejo, had some more bus station empanadas (not as fresh this time) and boarded our second bus of the day around 2:00. At approximately 2:05 I was asleep again and what I thought had to be an hour or so later Matt woke me up. I thought we were at a routine stop for a bathroom break, but it turns out it was only 2:30 and we were only 10 miles outside San Jose. Our bus had broken down and we were on the side of the road. About 10 minutes later a replacement bus showed up, it was smaller and there were a few squabbles over seats as there weren’t enough on the new bus and of course there had to be a loud, annoying American that kicked people out of their seats and made them stand the whole time because she knew everything, but at least we got to sit down, we still had another five hours to go.

We finally arrived in Puerto Viejo around 7:00 pm and found cheap lodging, enjoyed a casado and a mango smoothie with Mario and went to bed. We’re going to spend the next few days doing nothing but laying on the beach, so unless something really exciting happens, we might not be back until we make it to Panama. We are heading there on Thursday morning and should arrive on the islands of Bocas del Toro on Thursday afternoon with many stories of more bus rides, ferry boats and walking around the bridge to Panama. We hope you all had a fantastic inauguration day and yes we did get to watch it, though we had to kick three little kids off their morning cartoons to do it.