Day 5: Mmmmm Coffee

Our day started with the usual breakfast of black beans, rice, and assorted fruit. By this time I was kind of getting tired of all the beans and rice. The fruit was still amazing; I’ll never get tired of that, but the rice and beans… After breakfast we had another lecture about Global Warming (I forgot to mention yesterdays). I forgot the name of the professor, but his lectures were amazing. He was really into what he was talking about and the lectures were even funny at times. I had no trouble staying awake.

After the lectures Geoff took us to Hilbert’s (a great name, I know) farm for a coffee tour. It was a short walk to his farm, but mostly up-hill, so that kind of sucked. When we arrived he had us all sit on these benches that formed a half circle around a small table that looked like it was carved out of a tree stump. Even before his initial talk about coffee started Chris made a friend.

Oh, let me give you a little back story on Hilbert. Apparently he is almost 60, the guy looks like he could be 35-40.

His favorite hobby is running and he can often been seen running past taxis up the mountain towards Santa Elena. I was told later that he also got 3rd place in a 10k out of everyone in Monte Verde a long with people all over the country, and from outside Costa Rica that came for the race. Ridiculous huh? He also runs marathons.

He gave us a talk about coffee all in Spanish. Geoff roughly translated all of it so it was understandable for us non-Spanish speakers. Hilbert went through the whole spiel about his coffee and showed us a lot of different beans.

After he talked to us for a while he took us around and showed us his coffee plants. Some of them still had beans on them because they weren’t ripe yet.

He also said that since the plants were shade grown and 100% organic they got a lot of diseases (the plant itself did, the coffee was fine) so every year they had to cut down a lot of the unhealthy plants and plant new coffee. Hilbert showed us other parts of his farm and other crops he grew. He was big on biodiversity. Here are some of his amazing bananas he grew.

After a short walk he took us to his sugar cane grinding station where there was a big rock we all could sit on. While he and Geoff ground sugar cane for juice, Hilbert told us stories of his youth. My personal favorite was the one where Hilbert and his siblings (as young children) would sit on that very rock and drink the liquor made from sugar cane. They would all get drunk with their grandfather and have a grand old time. Hilbert said that he had a lot of fond memories of his youth on that farm, and that it really meant a lot to him when he drew that farm in the lottery the Quakers put on.

On a side note about the Quakers, apparently a long time ago they bought almost all of the land on Monte Verde and gave it to the Ticos with a few big stipulations. They had to farm the land, they never could sell it, and they had to keep the land in their families. That is how Hilbert got his farm.

After Geoff and Hilbert squeezed enough juice we all got to try some sugar cane. It was sooooo good. I could drink that stuff forever, but I bet my body would go into major sugar shock.

Everyone happily (or not so happily because some people didn’t like the juice) drank his or her sugar cane juice on the rock.

After we had all had some juice to drink Hilbert cut up the cane into slices for us all to try. Chris and I ate a lot of that; it was super yummy and crunchy.

We left the rock and made our way off of the farm. Eventually we made it back to where we started and Hilbert gave us all bananas. It was especially funny for me because when he handed me my first banana, looked at me again and then said “muy grande”. He then proceeded to give me another banana as he chuckled.

We headed off of the farm and back to the Eco Lodge for lunch. I finally remembered to take a picture of what we ate.

In the afternoon we had a lecture about plants, mostly given by Katie.

Our lecture ended and we were sent into the field to identify plants. It later dissolved into Plant Jeff giving us a tour of the property and showing us all of the cool plants. Tim, one of the other naturalists got a cool looking bug on his watch.

As we walked around James found a banana flower and started playing with it.

He then decided that he wanted to take it apart.

Jeff continued to show us plants. One of the plants that I especially liked was the sensitive plant. Basically, when you touched it the plant rolled up. It was really fun to play with.
After the walk around I took a neat picture of a sprinkler, I don't know why… I just like it.

Next on our agenda for the day was our cooking lesson with a local family. Geoff took us on that outing as well. The walk was pretty cool this time, but mostly because I finally saw a toucan.

Some of the scenery was cool too.


These cows posed well for me, well I should say cow and calf.


We finally got the cooking lesson and it turns out that we were going to make erapas (I think that is how it was spelled).

Erapas are a sort of sweet bread made with a lot of butter, flour and sugar. Boy were they tasty. They were pretty simple to make so when we were all done cooking the group decided to play soccer with the kids.


Here are some pictures Chris and one of the boys attempting trick kicks or shots.


We continued to hang out and play. I eventually looked up and saw a sunset through the clouds. It was gorgeous. I immediately got Geoff and pointed it out to him, both being photographers, we snapped away.

After a while we left the families and went back to the Eco Lodge for dinner. We ate the usual beans and rice with a salad and some meat. Geoff found a cane toad and showed it to us. It was pretty huge.

Some of us hung out for a while outside the Comedor and played taboo. Hudson and I dominated which was pretty fun. I am exhausted and off to bed now. Goodnight!