Café y Calor

We have no running water right now! And it’s not just my house but the entire community. Normally this would not be a problem considering I only shower every other day but currently I am a bit dirty. This morning I joined a trip organized my teacher at the language school that led me, along with three other students, about an hour outside the city. Considering we were only going an hour away, I did not suspect that the climate and terrain would be as different as it ended up being. Literally after thirty minutes of driving southwest and dropping down a good two thousand feet, the temperate already felt much warmer. When we reached our first destination, a coffee plantation, I felt like I was back in Florida during the summer. It was amazing to feel the warmth of the sun, especially after struggling to sleep last night due to the very cold weather in Xela and lack of indoor heat.

Quick aside…the temperature in Xela is like nothing I have ever been around. Because the city sits at 7000 feet or so above sea level and is further south than Florida, the middle of the day is quite pleasant (11am-4pm) and the rest of the day/night is very cold. Couple this with the fact that most houses do not have insulation or heat and it makes for a cold night. I wear my sweatshirt, sweatpants, and a shirt to bed and my muscles still tense up while I sleep. I am definitely asking for more blankets tonight!

Back to today….we arrived at the coffee plantation by means of my Spanish teacher’s truck and the scenery leading up to the finca was gorgeous. Once again, we traveled through the lush green countryside staring at scattered villages, distant volcanoes, and plots of crop land somehow existing at extreme inclines. The plantation was also beautiful as in the distance it is easy to spot the seventh most active volcano in the world. We had the pleasure of seeing it erupt a few times today. Fact: Guatemala has 27 volcanoes, and among them the third and sixth most active volcanoes in the world. This coffee plantation is unique in that it produces very little coffee compared to the other much larger plantations and the coffee grown is very, very high quality and mostly organic. I learned that it is actually impossible to make coffee 100 percent organic but this plantation hopes to be 98 percent organic in the next two years. Currently it is about 92 percent.

In the midst of the visit, I learned a lot about coffee that I definitely never knew. I saw my first coffee plant; the fruit of the plant, or the seeds, come in red, green, or yellow. I ate the outside part of the coffee seed and it is actually quite sweet. The inside is the “bean” that gets processed into the coffee most people drink. The process starts by picking the seeds and then bathing them in a pool of water. The bath of water helps to separate the red from the green as the red beans rise to the top. Then, the beans get flushed down the drain into another room where the outside of the seed (the sweet part) is separated from the inside (the bean). After the beans are separated they are allowed to ferment for around 7 hours. In a non organic farm, the fermentation process is sped up by chemicals and such making it the process faster. Once the beans have fermented they are once again moved into a different canal, this time the canal helps to separate the different grades of coffee. The canal is structured almost like a river with different levels that borders a large area where the beans are raked, allowed to dry, and then bagged. The best beans sink right away and end up on the first level of the canal while the worst beans float all the way down the canal and end up at the lowest level. The coffee that is drunk in Guatemala, in most homes and at my language school, is the coffee that made it pretty far down the canal. The good stuff is exported to other countries for high prices. After the beans are separated, they are then moved to one of many large drying fields where workers consistently rake the beans back and forth allowing them to dry evenly. After this, the beans are brought inside to a drying machine which helps to bring down the humidity of the bean to the exact percentage of 10 percent. The bean must have a humidity of 10 percent or otherwise it will burn while roasting. This plantation, like many, then ship off the beans to other farms that help to roast and grind the coffee into the product bought at Starbucks. For more information on coffee processing, check out Coffee Processing on Wikipedia. There is also more to the story about coffee in Guatemala and I will share it soon when I write about the Guatemalan economy.

This particular plantation/farm was also unique in that it pays its workers fair wages, provides housing, food, and education on location, and is managed well. I believe that my teacher said that this coffee will become fair trade coffee in a few years making the prices skyrocket. My teacher also has a hookup with a women’s coop in the coffee industry and is able to get some of the HIGHEST quality coffee in the world (the inside of the inside of the coffee bean) for a reasonable price. I think it costs about 20 dollars for a bag. Let me know if you want some!!!

After learning about the process, we took a walk through the plantation grounds and got to see banana trees, plantain trees, and a ton of coffee plants. I took a banana that looked semi ripe off of a tree as I was hungry, but it was very difficult to open the peel and instead of eating an amazingly fresh banana, I got sticky juice all over my hand. But don’t worry, we bought some bananas a few hundred meters down the street and they were delicious.

After the coffee plantation, we drove a bit further down the road and ended up at a community called Las Talmas (I think) that ten years ago was devastated by a volcanic eruption. We parked at the edge of a ravine and began our walk to a hidden lake deep formed by the aftermath of the volcanic eruption. In order to even begin our walk we had to cross one of two suspended wooden bridges that only two or so people could be on at one time. Just crossing the bridge, swaying back and forth, made the trip for me! We continued to walk through the rather barren landscape that was surrounded by rainforests (quite a unique combination), had to cross a rapidly moving stream, and then made it to our final destination, Lago San Pedro. The lake was absolutely framed perfectly with the hills behind it sloping downward toward the center, and the volcano soaring directly above the center. One of the other students had a sweet camera and I will get her pictures very soon! I took a quick swim in the lake, tried to catch some tadpoles with my teacher’s son, and then went back to the shade to relax a bit. Lunch consisted of jelly and cheese sandwiches and fruit. I learned something new about pineapple today, one of my favorite fruits. I ate about a fifth of an entire pineapple, quite a good showing, and about half way through my binge session, I felt as if my tongue was dying. In fact, by the end, I declared it dead. The sweetness and acidity of the pineapple destroyed my taste buds and even now, six hours later, I feel them only starting to recover.

On the hike back from the lake, we passed two young boys on a horse, no saddle, herding about ten cows. Walking through these relatively undisturbed areas, I got a glimpse of true Guatemalan rural life. We were able to watch the cows, baby cows and all, cross the river as a group and it was an amazing sight to see. However, it wasn’t much fun when we ended up following them through five minutes of the trail. There is a reason, in English, we call it bullshit.

Packing back in the truck, we drove back to Xela, back to the city, and back to the cold.