Buenos Dias,
As you can see from the photos above, I still have not mastered the art of getting them to line up as I would like. Oh well.
We visited the Britt Coffee Farm and Roaster this week. It was really the only place we ventured out to since it rained a lot. But this coming Wednesday we will start renting a vehicle, so our travels will increase greatly as will our dialogue on this blog.
Here are descriptions of the pics above.
The top three are all from the coffee farm. There is one of the shop to buy souvenirs and coffee, ripe red coffee beans waiting to be picked, and a cart that used to be used to transport the picked beans in from the fields.
The trees with a white “paint” around the trunks are from the central park in Santa Barbara. The white substance is a natural juice from certain plants that are used in order to keep the cutter ants from destroying those trees! Those ants are incredible, and the damage they can do is beyond belief. Hence, the painting of the trunks. Next to that pic is a mural of coffee farm workers from the Britt Coffee Farm.
The large pink trumpet flowers are what greets us as we enter the driveway at the house we have rented. Unfortunately, the blooming period for this plant is nearing the end. The pic next to it is our view of the city of Escazu in the valley below us. This pic is taken from our porch!!! At night it is lit up like a xmas tree and sparkles like twinkling stars.
The last row has a beverage vendor in the central park of Heredia. These vendors are common, and I believe they sell only non-alcoholic beverages. Final pic is of some of the flora we see while sitting on the front porch.
The trip we made to the coffee farm was really fun and informative. So many different steps to get those beans into our cups. And are you ready for this, there are actually professional coffee tasters!! If a batch of beans is roasted too long, or a blend of beans is not just right, the whole batch is discarded. The coffee tasters actually taste and then spit out small amounts of each batch that is roasted, and either give their approval or not. I guess if they actually drank the coffee they tasted they would probably never sleep. Still, what a nice job to have.
The rainy season is coming to an end, maybe 2-3 weeks left. It rains anywhere from 3 hours to 12 hours a day! Some days it doesn’t rain at all, if fact we had 3 days in a row with no rain since we have been here. But usually there is rain daily.
We are going to be doing a lot of exploring of this country starting this week. Hopefully I can get the pics to act right when I upload them!!! Take care everyone. Stay happy.
Pura Vida.
Deb & Tim
Deb & Tim's Adventure 