Our longer hike in and out the next day marked the price of progress. It felt good.
beer before coffee, never …
Our hosts gave us a tour of the coffee farm.
More interesting than the process of growing, harvesting, and processing coffee beans was the history of the valley. A prominent Quaker gifted the valley to several local families, who are now great stewards of the land and have an intense amount of pride in it. They’re trying to branch into the sustainable tourism market to share it with others.
Olander demonstrated the process of picking coffee beans and asked if anyone wanted to give it a try.
We goaded Jenna into volunteering. The light was nice and her “tooth fairy approved” smile contagious, if everyone’s coffee was handpicked with such happiness and even a tiny bit of it transferred into the product, the coffee drinkers of the world would be a much happier lot.
contagious happiness
QAE
Following the coffee tour, we had an invite to Marco’s. It was “just down the road”. Based on the previous day’s experience, everyone packed headlamps and water. As it turns out, it was, actually, just across the road.
“Is that a [headlamp] battery pack in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?”
It was beautifully tended, with lots of flowering trees and bushes, fruit trees, and a pond full of tilapia. He beamed with pride as he showed us his baby heifer, recently acquired.
He also had goats and chickens.
Why no, Mr. Customs Agent, I haven’t had close contact with foreign livestock
Chickens. The night we arrived at the coffee farm Robin cycled through the alarm options on her phone and settled on the rooster. When a rooster crowed around 4 in the morning I blamed Robin. Not Robin’s rooster. Throughout the week at times I thought it might be signaling Cinderella to go home instead of announcing dawn. Now we knew who owned the culprit.
Marco concluded that sustainable farming might not be great for the pocketbook but is good for the soul. And for a small amount of cash (~$15/day) his family offers to host and feed a person, plus provide “immersive instruction in Spanish” (by default).
Back at the coffee house many of us had purchased bags of roast to take back home. Now the wonderful smell of fresh grind filled our living space and masked the smell of stinky socks.
We hatched the plan for our last day. Work until around 11 am then hike the rest of the way up unfinished trail onto the Sendero Pacifico, and back down another cow path to complete a loop.