Our plans to visit a coffee plantation were nearly scuppered when we found the local park was closed on a Tuesday. But we think having found another plantation to go to we were better off.
The original park sounds quite commercialised with lots of rides like Thorpe Park or Alton Towers and we didn’t want that anyway, but the plantation we went to just do the coffee tour and that’s all.
We were quite fortunate in that the staff only spoke Spanish but there was a tour in progress which we joined with a Columbian lady married to and American guy and she translated everything for us. We then joined another group to do the first part of the tour and 3 Argentinian guys were on that who also spoke English so it all worked out fine in the end.
We thought it would take an hour or two, but we were there for 5 hours. We started by dressing up in traditional costume and having the purpose and reason for the various clothing and equipment, we even had to dance. We then walked around the estate looking at the plants and where and how they grow and then back to pick some beans. Then to take the husks off, sort them, dry them and wash them for more sorting, we looked at how they did this 100 years ago and also how they do it now.
This is how they then sell the coffee these days and specialist roasters make the various types that we buy, but they show us how the coffee is roasted and then made some fresh coffee which we tried, a very good day.
Back to the hotel and into the pool, jacqusi and Turkish bath whilst Andreas brings us drinks to the poolside, it’s a hard life here but we must leave and head a bit further North tomorrow.
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