We toured Coloma Coffee Plantation, nestled in the mountain town of Fusa.
The coffee bushes are not in a field along rows like we thought they would be. They are all bunched up together along little curving paths. Seems inefficient for picking, according to our American mindset. But we are sure they know what they are doing!
Coffee Growing 101: You take a bean (not the kind at the grocery store) and plant it in soil mixed with sand. It takes 2 months to grow to this height. Notice that the bean grows up through the soil and is at the top of the plant. This was so cool.
It then looks like this.
Then it is transported once it is this size.
And it is planted. This is Jorge Rico, who taught us all about the coffee. These mature plants are about 25 years old. They prune them to stay this size b/c the coffee is better this way.
The plants produce these flowers, which eventually turn into....
Green coffee beans (look closely).
When the green beans turn red, they are ready to be picked. Since it is not coffee season, it was very hard to find a red bean.
We let Lucia pick the red beans and she was thrilled. We always tell her how famous Colombia is for coffee. It was heart warming to see her pride in coffee and Colombia.
Our little treasures.
The plantation church.
There were many machines that we looked at that processed the coffee. This was one of the last ones, where we could smell the delicious coffee smell.
Coffee from the plantation.
Coffee and coffee liquor awaited us at the end of our tour. Lucia preferred the taste of the liquor in her coffee (probably b/c there was no cream).
Us Kirkland girls love our coffee!
On the way home, we stopped by one of the roadside places to get one of these hanging food items. They are everywhere. This place looked very dirty, so I did not eat any. Brian and Lucia did and said it tasted like cheese biscuits.
Back to the Dodge Dart-- Jorge got a natural gas engine put in his car to help cut down on pollution. So he took us to the station and we got to see how to fill a car tank with natural gas. This was very interesting.
Silas says, "HOORAY we are home!!!" He kept doing his arms like this and it was cracking us up. We figured he must be able to tell we were almost at our hotel. It was a great day and we are so glad we went. After being in the hot mountains and polluted city, the first thing we did was take a shower. It never felt so good to be clean!
1 comment:
Wow, Trisha! You are doing a great job of capturing your experience! It sounds like you all had an amazing day!
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