HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing the coffee roasted
BUMMER OF THE DAY: The sun disappeared after lunch
WORD OF THE DAY: Blue Heather making a comment about economizing…hilarious
We woke to a beautiful view of the coffee plantation and surrounds. It is quite surprising when you arrive in the dead of night just what the scenery looks like during the day. It was truly stunning here with rolling hills of coffee trees and valleys below us. We had a plantation tour at 10am; breakfast was at your own pace from 8.30am of cereal and cold milk!!! This is a treat and it just makes your cereal taste so much better. It is only the long-life stuff, but when it’s cold it is delicious. I am happy to report that Rosita made it safe and sound up the last hill this morning safe and sound. It is amazing what can be done when you can actually see according to Gray. The next step was going to be trying to turn her around tomorrow, as there isn’t a lot of turning room, but Gray seems to have it all under control, let’s just hope it doesn’t rain and we should be okay.
Nadia, her husband and the plantation manager took us for a walk around the grounds. We started with a walk to get a better view of the coffee plantations from a bamboo house that had been built a few years ago. They used the local bamboo from the river on the property and the actual structure was strong as an ox, but the matting has been worn down by the weather and we had to make sure that we were walking on the beams of the house and not entirely on the actual matting as it was a little thread bare. But the view was great and it was a cute little place made entirely from bamboo. The steps, the doors, the chairs and also the tables all made from bamboo. Cool little joint.
From here we walked back up the hill and proceeded to walk some of the plantation and saw the plants at all their stages of growth and we learned how much time and effort goes into getting that coffee into your cups back home. It is a pretty labor intensive job and I am surprised that the coffee isn’t more expensive than what it is after seeing the process from start to finish. I’m not a coffee drinker, but it was an interesting all the same. After the picking process we saw each step, all done by hand and pretty simple machines. Starting with the gathering of coffee cherries: during this stage, only the totally ripe cherries, normally red or yellow, are picked. Green cherries spoil the taste of a cup of coffee. This process is performed entirely by hand. Then the Pulping: the same day the berries are gathered, they are subjected to a pulping process, whereby the berry is removed from the bean. Next is the fermentation: during this part of the process, the beans are allowed to rest. Then the washing: the remains of mucilage left on the bean are removed and sugars are eliminated with fresh water. Then the drying: after washing, the beans are exposed to the heat of the sun for their humidity to decrease, thus facilitating their conservation. To make transportation easier, the dried beans are then packed in clean sacks made from sisal. Further on, the thin shell of parchment called pergamino is removed from the bean. The last process is the roasting of the coffee. It was really cool to see it all from start to finish and the final product on the table smelt amazing and that is from a non-coffee drinker. All that for one bean. Next time you have a cup of coffee you don’t finish, think of all the man hours and production time that has gone into that cup. It gives me a new appreciation for the drink that is for sure.
Colombian Coffee is a protected designation of origin granted by the European Union (September 2007) that applies to the coffee produced in Colombia. The Colombian coffee has been recognized worldwide as having high quality and distinctive taste. The main importers of Colombian coffee are United States, Germany, France, Japan, and Italy. Historical data indicates that the Jesuits brought coffee seeds to South America with them circa 1730 CE, but there are different versions of this. Tradition says that the coffee seeds were brought by a traveler from Guyana who passed through Venezuela before reaching Colombia. The oldest written testimony of the presence of coffee in Colombia is attributed to a Jesuit priest, José Gumilla. In his book The Orinoco Illustrated (1730), he registered the presence of coffee in the mission of Saint Teresa of Tabajé. The first coffee crops were planted in the eastern part of the country. In 1835 the first commercial production was registered with 2,560 green coffee bags that were exported from the port of Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela. Regional climate change associated with global warming has caused Colombian coffee production to decline since 2006 from 12 million 132-pound bags, the standard measure, to 9 million bags in 2010. Average temperatures have risen one degree Celsius between 1980 to 2010, with average precipitation increasing 25 percent in the last few years, disrupting the specific climatic requirements of the Coffea Arabica bean.
After we had been shown the whole process we waited a further 20 minutes for the coffee beans to be roasted which were being hand turned in a metal barrel over a log fire by a very good looking Colombian young man. Now listen here, there is nothing wrong with a little window shopping and he was very easy on the eye that is for sure. The beans when they were the right colour were then tipped onto a concrete table where they were able to cool and then we could try a few of the end product. By the time they emptied the barrel the whole 6m table was covered in cooling beans and it was really cool that we were allowed to touch them. Then of course cups of coffee came out on trays for people to try. I didn’t have a cup of coffee as I really don’t like the taste, but I did try a few of the roasted beans just on their own and they were okay. They still had a coffee taste to them but they were all right. We got some great photos with the 5 stages of beans and a few of us made words in the roasted beans which looked awesome. Nadia then asked who wanted to buy some of the coffee after we had all had our dirty mitts all over the beans. Too funny, I am sure that is the stuff they will be selling us. It is a small operation all the work is done manually and different farms have different levels of technology processing them all but it was amazing to see how much work goes into making a single roasted coffee bean. It gives me a new appreciation for the drink even though I am not a drinker of coffee. On our walk around the plantation the whole group was getting bitten by these little flying insects. They looked like midgies but only slightly bigger and you didn’t know they had bitten you till you went to scratch and there was a little blob of blood at the bite site. Sneaky bugger, but we didn’t really think anything else of it as we all had little red spots on our arms and legs. I am calling them bloody sucking flying buggers.
We walked back to the accommodation for lunch and then the day was free to do whatever we wanted. Some of the guys walked down to the river for a swim, people sat by the pool and read books and I decided to sit in the shade with my computer and blog. I also wrote some postcards which have been a long lost job that I need to pick up again. From sending 5 postcards a week to not having sent one in 8 weeks, I feel a bit bad I have lost my postcard mojo. So I got some postcards in Cartagena and we found some very elusive stamps in one of the souvenir shops and they weren’t kidding when they said that postage wasn’t cheap here. Each postcard costs 4AUD to send and I thought Ecuador was expensive at 2.50AUD a postcard. But I do need to send them so Zeme and the God-daughters are first off the ranks and I need to get Dave's new address in Brisbane and I have Sean’s 20 line long addresses that I should also send one too. With only 8.5 weeks left of my trip, I have a feeling I may beat some of my cards home now, but it is the thought that counts right! The sun disappeared in the afternoon and it looked like it was going to storm all afternoon with some threatening clouds and a lot of thunder, but thankfully nothing eventuated. I have a feeling if it rained while Rosita is still up here we maybe get in a spot of bother.
Tonight’s dinner was the last Gray cooked dinner of the whole trip. It doesn’t mean that much to the newbies as we haven’t camped once on this trip so he hasn’t had the need to cook for them, but after 145 days on tour and approximately 60 of those camping we have been SUPER lucky that 58 of those times Gray has enjoyed cooking, even after driving up to 10 hours on the day. This was a big deal for the 4 of the originals (I’m counting myself) so after dinner I got up and made a speech in front of everyone thanking Gray for the great meal tonight and for all the meals he had cooked for us over the last 5 months. For me to get up in front of 22 people is a BIG deal as I am not a public speaker and I have to say I also got a little emotional about it all with the trip coming to a close. It really is an amazing feat what Gray has done and I would like to say thank-you again Gray for all the great food that you have served us. I am also very lucky as I requested roast chicken and mash for our last meal after Gray had cooked an amazing chicken in Salta just after Christmas. And my wish was fulfilled and the meal was amazing. You R.O.C.K Gray.
The rest of the evening I spent listening to music reading my book and while I had the space and the charge I decided to back up the first 8 months of photos on my external hard drive that I had corrupted in Cuzco in December. I had all the photos in their original format on the micro SD cards and I was going to see if I could get someone to just retrieve the corrupted files from my hard drive when I got home, but no time like the present so I spent the next few hours backing up 31,168 photos into new folders on the external drive. I have now taken 46,978 photos on my trip so far and to break that down a little that is 119 pictures a day, when the things I am seeing and doing I think that is quite moderate. I haven’t forgotten that on my Africa trip we all took a guess on how many photos I would have by the end of my Odyssey and below are what the guesses were in July 2011:
15,555 Janet
28,488 Paps
29,555 Jo
30,489 Em
33,333 Bree
32,873 Sean
34,245 Emma S
35,731 Lisa
37,377 Laura
38,641 Emma T
43,246 Louise
46,100 ME
49,251 Katie
63,483 Mike
92,000 Julia
So everyone is now out of the running except Louise, ME, Katie, Mike and Julia. Based on the 119 pics a day with 109 days of my journey to go that will make it a total of or close to 59,830 photos and that would make Mike the winner. But the trip is not over yet but that is where the tally is standing as we speak. It is also scary to think I have loaded 85% of those pictures to Facebook, wow that is a lot of pictures but when I am old and gray they will be good to look over and I love sharing them with people that may never get the opportunity to travel to all these countries.
So that was our great day on the coffee plantation and it was just what everyone needed to relax and have some QT (quality time off the truck). Tomorrow we head to Cali, a big city for 2 nights and then the final push for the last 3 nights of the trip.
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