Cafe Monteverde Coffee Plantation

In the afternoon after our ziplining at Selvatura Park, our tour itinerary included an excursion to Cafe Monteverde to see how coffee is grown and roasted in Costa Rica.  

On a discount tour, Julie and I have a certain amount of skepticism regarding included excursions that might devolve into an extended shopping trip.

We could have opted out and used that time to explore our Hotel Establo Mountain Hotel's expansive, park-like grounds, but coffee is something we enjoy daily year-round, so why not go to learn more about how it is produced?

After all, included excursions are free.  Even when there is a sales pitch and extended shopping time at the end, these excursions usually are mostly interesting to me. 

Everyone in our tour group participated in the outing.  Our guide at the plantation was a descendent of Quakers who had been part of a large migration of farmers from Alabama and Pennsylvania to Costa Rica in the 1950's.  She told us all about how coffee is grown while showing us around the property.

We were encouraged to pick ripe berries for ourselves and experience how difficult it is to determine ripeness and pick the right ones without damaging them.

Nicaraguan seasonal workers provide most of the field labor at Cafe Monteverde and other plantations.  The workers are paid by the bag.  Based on our rate of picking, we would not earn much beyond the provided room and board during the season.

While we enjoyed pleasant, sunny weather this day, Costa Rica is very close to the Equator, so you know there are some scorching hot days in the field.  It's hard work for meager pay, but the Nicaraguans are happy to have the opportunity.

It's a good reminder of how shallow complaints about first world jobs can be.

We learned about the agricultural methods used by Cafe Monteverde to enrich the soil.  They don't claim to be organic, saying that is too inefficient.

Cafe Monteverde is sustainably farmed.  They use science to build better soil. 

Do I remember details of what I heard?

Frankly, no, but the concepts were interesting and worth learning about.

Eventually, we went to a gift shop that doubled as a tasting room, where our coffee guide served various roasts of coffee and asked if we could recognize subtle differences in taste.

Most who prided themselves on sophisticated coffee palates, boasting about grinding their own beans and their expensive espresso machines or complicated brewing methods seemed to prefer darker roasts, while Julie and I liked the medium roast better.

In response to what I thought a rather silly question about which had higher caffeine, our plantation guide revealed that darker roast coffees are lower in caffeine than lighter roasts.  That was the most mind-blowing fact of the coffee tour, one I was relatively sure must be wrong. Upon double-checking it this morning, it turns out that our plantation guide was right!

Yes, drinking that French Roast that to me tastes like someone cleaned an ash tray with the water is lower in caffeine than a nice medium roast like we prefer!

Emphasis was placed throughout the tour on the fact that all of Costa Rica, by national decree, grows only the best Arabica coffee beans in order to become synonymous with quality coffee.  Of course, Cafe Monteverde believes theirs is the very best coffee of all.

After the tasting, most of our group began buying souvenirs, including bags of whole coffee beans for gifts or to grind back home for their own complex coffee making methods, whether espresso machine, French Press or what to me seems like a rather absurdly meticulous hand pour method.

At home, we drink pre-ground Don Franisco Vanilla Nut Medium Roast Coffee out of cans, which does not specify Costa Rica or any other particular country as the source of their beans.  We use a drip coffee maker, not the cheapest but certainly not the best.

Looking carefully at the label on Don Francisco's coffee can this morning, I am proud to say that they use only 100% Arabica beans.  I guess despite the foo-foo vanilla nut twist (which tastes really good with Splenda and milk), our natural taste is for Arabica beans, though not claiming to be exclusively grown in Costa Rica.

However, I will repeat that Costa Rican coffee was excellent throughout our vacation.

That evening, we returned to the lounge for a happy hour sunset.

More of our tour group were there for sunset.  The colors weren't quite as spectacular as the prior evening, but the view was still quite lovely.

Julie again had dry, white wine, while I savored a Negroni.

After nightfall, we joined the group for an included dinner at a nearby restaurant in Monteverde.

We remember it being a nicely plated meal with generous helpings of excellent dishes in a lovely restaurant, but the specific details have slipped away.

We dined sharing a table with Steve and Maureen, the couple from Buck's County, Pennsylvania, whom we sat by at our group dinner in La Fortuna.  We continued conversations, finding a lot of common ground.

For what it is worth, our tour also included lunch included this day, but I don't recall where or what that was.  Life unfolds so quickly that sometimes you have to take notes or you lose track.  I usually take pictures as shorthand, but I wasn't as diligent as I should have been.

The next morning, we arose early and went outside to take in the panoramic views once more.

An odd little creature --- a White-Nosed Coati --- scampered by outside our room, a final reminder that we had been staying in a Cloud Forest among wildlife.

Our bus brought us to the lobby at the base of the mountain for breakfast.  The restaurant was surprisingly crowded.  Still, we enjoyed another wonderful buffet breakfast replete with hot dishes and an eggs-to-order bar, as we had the prior day.

When we were finishing our second meals, a new tour bus from a competitor arrived.  The dining room  was already close to capacity. A server asked us if we could leave our table, but we weren't quite finished, so we lingered a bit longer.

A few minutes later, but still before our scheduled pickup time, we went to wait for our bus.  It wasn't quite a "bum's rush," as my dad used to call it, but it was close, and not a good way to end what had otherwise been an exemplary stay.  Rather than sitting by the curb to await our bus, Julie and I went upstairs to a pleasant sitting area.

Soon, we were on the road again, this time heading to Manuel Antonio State Park.