The most fresh cuppa coffee in my life

In Salento the "Plantation House" hostal owners Christina and Tim also own a small coffee "Finca" and Tim gives every morning a fun two hour tour. The tour ends with the most fresh cup of coffee you can ever wish for. The photo above is at the end of the tour when the process of the last steps of the coffee production are explained. Walking down from the hostal, the FINCA is found:

The scenery is beautiful and the FINCA has all sort of eco-experiments going on. The path to the farm shows you many different plants and fruits, among them the pineapples (below some plants and one of them with a fruit - did you know they grow that way...?):

The coffee plants grow best in the shade, so lots of other trees (such as banana trees) can offer such shade. They need good fertile (mostly vulcano) soil at a certain altitude (best between 1200 and 2000 meters if I remember well from Tim's explanations). The main harvest is in October-November, but there are several other smaller harvest moments, also one in March-April. Coming closer to the farm I took a photo on which you can see on the right a small guest room Tim has built there as well as the retractable roof for the drying of the coffee beans. Below that photo a few photos of the guest room & its very nice view, as well as a more detailed photo of the moveable roof:

Tim is in the process of making a rain water collection system with a solar powered pump to always have fresh and clean water. Here is his design and a few photos of the system:

Tim explained the growing, harvesting and production process with this photo collection, and you will just have to do the tour yourself to hear all the details. All I can say is that he does a great job and is a very entertaining story-teller.

The nursery grows the small plants to a certain size before planting them for production. The larger cofee plants are all over the terrain. In the demonstration kitchen the staff then shows the process of peeling the coffee beans of several of its layers before the roasting and grinding can take place

The freshly roasted and grinded cup of coffee was certainly a special treat at the end of the tour!

Now as a true coffee-addict/affectionado I better know how the coffee is produced... :-)

Salento in the coffee region

During the Easter long weekend I traveled to a small town called Salento. It was the advice from one of my colleagues at SENA to go here. It is a community of about 7,000 people in the middle of the coffee producing region of Colombia. The scenery is beautiful at about 2,000 meters in the Andes mountains. Here are a few photos of the scenery around the town of Salento:

 

 

 

I stayed in a backpacker's place called the "Plantation House". A good experience to be hosted by owners Christina and Tim, a wonderful couple who have their own house next door with a view to kill for. Visitors from their hostal regularly visit Chris' and Tim's house for the sunset. They also own a small coffee plantation and I will dedicate a seperate post on the visit I made there.

 

During the Easter weekend many Colombians visit Salento and the town organizes a lot of additional events. The first evening I walked around a bit and here are a few photos of the pleasant atmosphere:

 

 

 

 

The town is know for its "trucha" dishes (trout), so I tried one of the places and had a trout cooked in a very nice mushroom sauce with - of course - a huge crispy "patacon" (plataan banana):

 

 

The second day in the morning I visited the coffee farm (see next post) and in the afternoon I enjoyed the atmosphere of the town busy with Colombians from all over the country. A fair amount of foreigners always visit Salento, but this weekend was clearly geared to domestic tourism:

 

 

 

A good cuppa coffee every now and then while enjoying the bustling street life in town. For the tourists there are horse rides, mountain bike rentals and the "gliding" experiences:

The second day there was a religious ceremony of the Salento Catholic church up the hill where a cross is positioned. I missed the ceremony, but did afterwards climb up the hill for some beautiful scenery:

The very popular local hats are sold to many visitors, and then they can feel a little bit like the many coffee producers for whom it is part of their daily uniform. During these days the farmers were taking it easy in the local bars where both pool and "billiard" are very popular entertainment:

Another popular local game is called "tejo" which is a bit like the horse-shoe throwing in north America. The two teams throw heavy metal subjects quite a distance from one end of the field to the other end. In the clay filled target there are metal rings for points to gain. At two spots on the metal rings are white triangles (see detailed photo) which are filled with gun powder. If the player hits that with metal on metal, there is a nice sound-effect to great hilarity of all players, and of course extra points are to be gained with that achievement.... I watched for a while and tried to throw a few times (but can tell you it looks a whole lot easier than it is; I barely managed to hit even the clay target)

Plenty of small bars and restaurants to entertain the visitors. Tried out a few, but in the end I still like best their rich and tasteful coffees! It were a couple of nice days in the very green environment!