RovingMind: Coffee Country, Part II

Two types of beans grown -- Arabica and Colombian

It took a while but I finally tracked him down -- Juan Valdez, that is. Appropriately enough, he was on a small coffee farm in the misty highlands of central Colombia. Una finca del café, as they call them here. And like seemingly everyone else these days, he was waiting out the rain.

"Sie, sie. Me llama Señor Valdez," he laughed. Evidently having heard the joke many times before. In reality his name is Fredy and he´s the administrator of an organic farm outside the town of Salento, in the heart of the coffee country. One of his jobs is to conduct tours of the place.

I was accompanied by Sara, a trekker from Canada who I hooked up with at the Tra-la-la, a hostel in Salento. Wearing rubber barn boots, we slid and sloshed about a km. down a muddy trail, to the little operation just outside of town.

Separating the husks from the actual beans

The tour is offered in Spanish one day and English the next. Our day happened to be in Spanish. Fortunately Sara speaks it better than I do and she filled in the gaps when I was struggling to understand Fredy's explanations.

More just than an education of coffee production, it was a view of life in the highlands, complete with Collies nuzzling at our knees, pussy cats jumping onto our laps, cups of coffee, about as fresh as you can get, and farmhands offering of marijuana, also about as fresh as you can get.

Despite the fact that I've never been much of a coffee drinker, I found it all fascinating. Especially since, compared to the larger, more commercial operations, this finca had such a down-home atmosphere.

And the coffee was alright, too. Sara appreciated it more than I did, being a long-time consumer.

When first on the tongue, it was on the bitter-ish side, which I´m told is typical of this region. All in all though, it was satisfying and fulfilling as it worked its way down to my innards. To really appreciate it, I´d say, you have to first taste and then swallow to get the full effect.

Maybe that's the way all coffee is, I don´t know. But that was just the raw taste, the physical part. What I took away from this was much more. As we clomped back into town I had a new awareness, an enlightenment even -- of la cultura de café, as they call it here. The culture of coffee, which is so much of life in Colombia.

You can see it at the many cafes in Salento -- campesinos, the country folk, sitting around in straw hats and ponchos and wearing barn boots, which seemingly everyone wears here during the rainy season -- sipping the local product and exuding of...well, of something good, I know that much.

How can I explain? They're smiling and chatting and nodding buenos dias to everyone who walks in, including wayward trekkers from Pennsylvania. Kind of a Starbucks where everyone extends a happy face (and there's no wi-fi).

There´s an intangible then, to this las cultura. An emanation of good will and sociability and camaraderie that I just wanted to go and join in. Heck, I didn't even drink the coffee in the one place, off the corner of the square in Salento. I'd sit in there sipping Coke or chocolate just to sit in there and grin along with them.

Speaking of chocolate -- hot chocolate, that is. The kind maybe you´re drinking back in cold weather country now, with marshmallows on top and all that. They serve it down here in bowls, soup bowls. Often you get it as part of breakfast, you know, with eggs, corn bread and such. You pick up the bowl with both hands and slurp it on down -- seemingly in defiance of the good manners that mother used to teach. But that´s how Colombianos do it

It´s weaker than the hot chocolate back in the States, watery even, but tasty in its own way nonetheless.

At any rate, being a farm boy and all that, I tend toward the agriculture-type places on these trips. I´ve been to coconut plantations in the Philippines, rubber and palm oil plantations in Malaysia, rice noodle factories in Vietnam, banana and mango farms in Indonesia, fish and snake farms in Thailand...and now the fincas in Colombia.

Of all of these, I have to say, this is the first one where I wish I could take home not just some of the product, but some of what goes along with it.