Touring Puerto Rico's Coffee region
Sep. 4th, 2006 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ste_noniSince we had the whole day free, we decided to take a tour of Puerto Rico's coffee-producing areas. We left home around 8:30am, grabbed some delicious sandwiches at the nearby bakery and headed south. Once we arrived in Ponce (southern edge of the island) we headed west towards Yauco. As we headed through Yauco and up into the mountains, we saw our first coffee bushes growing on the steep, green hills. We stopped to take a picture and noticed a woman picking coffee below us. She told us to come on down so we did. She had a wicker basket full of picked coffee cherries. She was mostly happy to see Ellie, but she did tell us that this was the first coffee harvest.
After we left her, we kept driving until we came across a coffee plantation (ranch? farm?). We drove up the lane in the pouring rain and Joe got out to talk to the owner. He didn't have any coffee around, but he did let us take four coffee seedlings with us.
After the seedlings, we kept driving on windy, narrow roads for almost an hour. There was so much bamboo, vines, bananas, coffee shrubs, sugar cane, impatiens, and other plants that driving down the road was like driving through a green tunnel. The weather alternated between absolute downpour (complete with red mud streams running across the road) and sunny sky. We got lunch in Maricao and the guy who gave us our food pointed us towards and a coffee roaster/seller. We stopped at his house. It was a totally boring looking home from the outside but once we were inside, we saw that he had the most amazing view of the mountains and the valley. The rain had just stopped and there was steam rising and clouds blowing through the mountains. His home was filled with all sorts of wooden coffee art and ironwork. He gave Joe a bag of his coffee and we kept on going. We stopped one more time at a coffee distributor but the only coffee they had at the moment was really poor quality. They gave us some, but the beans looked terrible and there was all sorts of other materials mixed in with the beans. We ended up throwing it away.
In all, it was a fun day. I loved all the rain - both watching it and listening to it. I can't wait to go back during coffee harvest season.
After we left her, we kept driving until we came across a coffee plantation (ranch? farm?). We drove up the lane in the pouring rain and Joe got out to talk to the owner. He didn't have any coffee around, but he did let us take four coffee seedlings with us.
After the seedlings, we kept driving on windy, narrow roads for almost an hour. There was so much bamboo, vines, bananas, coffee shrubs, sugar cane, impatiens, and other plants that driving down the road was like driving through a green tunnel. The weather alternated between absolute downpour (complete with red mud streams running across the road) and sunny sky. We got lunch in Maricao and the guy who gave us our food pointed us towards and a coffee roaster/seller. We stopped at his house. It was a totally boring looking home from the outside but once we were inside, we saw that he had the most amazing view of the mountains and the valley. The rain had just stopped and there was steam rising and clouds blowing through the mountains. His home was filled with all sorts of wooden coffee art and ironwork. He gave Joe a bag of his coffee and we kept on going. We stopped one more time at a coffee distributor but the only coffee they had at the moment was really poor quality. They gave us some, but the beans looked terrible and there was all sorts of other materials mixed in with the beans. We ended up throwing it away.
In all, it was a fun day. I loved all the rain - both watching it and listening to it. I can't wait to go back during coffee harvest season.
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Date: 2006-09-05 01:04 pm (UTC)