Gino's Travels: Still in Salento

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Still in Salento

Yesterday we had a vist and tour around a Coffee farm, very interesting, I never realised how labour intensive coffee making is, the coffee beans have to be hand picked which isn't the easiest, seemingly its better to pick them in the rain, then they are seperated from the outer shell, they are then fermented (to get rid of the sugar) after that they are dried and the inner skin removed then roasted before they are ground to make your coffee. After seeing the process and how little the farmers get per Kilo I hate the big coffee chains more, Starbucks and Costa have seen the last of my money!
It was great to sample to finished product but I could have done with some sugar! A walk around the farm felt like we were in the jungle in parts, plenty creepy crawlies going around, on the path back to the hostel we spotted a huge spider , turned out to be a Tarantula, must admit I was careful putting my shoes on today!
Salento is a really nice town and its a great place to chill out an people watch, yesterday one of the girls on the tour was from Cork but didn't know any of the reprobates we do and then last night we were speaking to a girl who was born in Perth but left before she could develop the accent, small world as always!
The original plan was to leave for Bogota today but seemingly most of the 8 million people on vacation from there will have the same idea so we go tomorrow hopefully, Werner and Claudia left for Medellin this morning so its probably the last time we will see them on this tour as they head for Cuba.

Coffee plant

Pineapple plant (they take about a year to grow)

Pretty flowers

Machine for taking the skins from the coffee beans (around 140 years old and still used)

Our Host Don Eduardo showing us his coffee picking technique

Drying the beans

From left to right, the flowers staring the process, 9 months later the berries are picked, then fermented, dried, de skinned, roasted, ground! easy as that