18 de septiembre 2016 Hacienda el Roble, Mesa de los Santos, Santander, Colombia
Yeah, I know the famous quote actually refers to sausage and laws, but last weekend I toured a coffee farm, not a legislative building or a butcher shop (side note, for those of you who don't know, I actually DO know how the sausage gets made, and I've actually made that sausage with my family).
For this trip, we got to sleep in a little bit and get on the bus around 6:30am. After an hour or two, we got to the restaurant where we had breakfast (Only $4.000 for a full breakfast - eggs, arepa, and coffee! That's approximately $1.33 USD.) and continued along our way to the Mirador del Chicamocha, where we took selfies, did a dynamic stretching warmup, and took a group picture.
What a view.
We then started walking up the road until we reached a dirt path leading into the trees - the start of the Ruta del Café.
The adventure begins.
We walked under the shade of the trees, chatting and admiring the view. This walk was nice and easy - no rock walls to climb here! It was nice and chill in the shade. We soon came upon another beautiful lookout point, so of course we had to stop for more pictures.
Just admiring the view and contemplating my minuscule existence.
We continued walking without much to report. Two hours of easy walking with beautiful views - in addition to the mountains and trees, we also got farms, a lake, and some really nice houses, not to mention all the various gorgeous flowers. We talked about everything from our lives back home to the current political landscape of education. But at long last, we made it to the Hacienda El Roble!
Hacienda literally translates to estate or plantation, but "plantation" in English has such terrible connotations.
Upon arrival, we were invited to tour the house on our own. The hacienda is an old house with lots of cool stuff, including a library full of old books and a beautiful garden courtyard. The house is also a hotel! I'll let you see for yourself what else they've got.
After looking around a bit, we sat down on the veranda and had some time to relax. They brought out snacks of mandarins, cookies, and the famous coffee.
Mandarins are like larger green oranges. Or should I call them greens?
For the longest time, the best coffee in the world was this coffee from Indonesia that was made by harvesting the coffee beans pooped out by animals that ate the fruit. A couple of years ago, the coffee from this region in Colombia (Mesa de los Santos) beat the poop coffee to become the best coffee in the world.
We snacked, we relaxed, we chatted, and then it was time to go out on our tour of the grounds (pun intended). We set out to the Coffee Garden with Jack, the Caminantes mascot for the day, plus another dog or two that lived at the hacienda.
Oh hey there Jack. Jack is a 4-month-old golden lab that is owned by one of the Caminantes guides.
The Coffee Garden (not the Jardin del Café, why would you think it would be named in Spanish?)
Our tour guide teaching us about the coffee plants.
The tour was in Spanish, so I probably missed a few interesting tidbits, but I'll pass on what I learned. I hope none of them got lost in translation. This is the truth as I know it:
Espresso has less caffeine than coffee. Making espresso is a physical reaction because the water runs through the grounds very quickly, so less caffeine is produced. Brewed coffee takes time for the water to run through, so a chemical reaction is allowed to occur, producing more caffeine. The longer it sits the more caffeine is produced, so the first cup (at least for a pour-over) always has the least caffeine.
They used to have only 1 type of coffee growing here, but they were required to plant a coffee tree for every sin they committed. Now there's a whole BUNCH of coffee trees in many different varieties.
The fruit off the tree.
Hey what's inside?
Oh look at that, it's the coffee beans!
1 gram of this specialty coffee can cost up to $100 USD.
Overall coffee quality of the whole world ranks Guatemala first, Panama second, and Colombia third. However, at this small farm they have people harvesting the berries rather than a machine, so the people are able to harvest only the ripest red berries, whereas a machine would harvest them all. This means smaller yields but better coffee.
Can you taste with all the colors of the coffee? (Dinosaur for scale.)
After picking the berries, the next step is to "ferment" the coffee. Through their experiments, they've discovered that coffee fermentation is best at exactly 18 hours. 19 hours and more leaves a weird over-mature aftertaste (like if you think about dating someone your parents' age). Less than 18 hours and the micro-bacteria would not be removed.
The coffee fermentation basin.
After fermentation, the next step is to dry the coffee. The beans stay 9 days on each level; the bottom level is first, then level two, then the top level. This is because the top level is the hottest.
The beans are on screens akin to the kind you'd sift for gold with. Makes sense, since this coffee costs a pretty penny.
Our next stop was a presentation of what happens next to the beans, all the way to your glass. We all packed into a little room where an old Colombian man told us his secrets. First, the dried beans are thrown into a machine where they are deshelled. The golden color you see is torn away, leaving a greenish-gray. Next, the beans are sorted through and defects are removed (insect-ridden, diseased, etc). For about 50 pounds of beans, perhaps 12 beans will be defective. Next, the beans are roasted, gaining their traditional brown coffee color. At this point, they can be packaged and ground at home or ground first and then packaged. Grinding at home right before use is better, because with pre-ground coffee, every time you open the bag, the coffee loses more of its aroma, so by the time you reach the bottom of the bag you're drinking crap.
Coffee beans throughout the process.
Started from the bottom now we're here!
Once we got to the grounds stage, we moved into the room next door, where he had set up four different varieties of the coffee they make at this farm: Caturra, Nacional, Borbón, and Tipica. He had grounds in glasses, and after telling us a little bit about them (in Spanish, so I am not sure of any descriptions here), he had us each come around and smell all the kinds.
This room smelled so good.
He then poured hot water into each one and talked about the chemical processes happening inside. The first cup will always be the weakest, because the water and the grounds haven't been able to react and produce very much caffeine. We were then each given a silver spoon (silver does not change the taste/smell of the coffee, where other materials might). These spoons were used to break up the foam to release the smell so we could try the aroma.
Catando means to try, smell, taste
Next, we were each given a glass of warm water and a tiny "spitoon" (for lack of a better word). Before we tasted any coffee and between each type, we were told to fully rinse our mouth with warm water. After rinsing, we got a spoonful of coffee, ensuring that the coffee hits everywhere in the mouth to reach all the taste buds and get the full flavorful experience. Our coffee instructor had this quick slurp-spit-rinse routine, but I decided that I didn't want to spit it out. Why waste the best coffee in the world? The slurping was fun though. No quiet spoon-feeding for us....you gotta make the noise! My favorite coffee we tried was the caturra. It was very strong, but not as bitter as the others.
After we all had the chance to catan (no, not the board game) the coffee, we took another group photo and headed back to the hacienda for a bit before heading back to the bus. We were settling in for the ride when we stopped again - we were given an hour to explore Mercado Campesino, an open-air market with lots of food, produce, souvenirs, and, unfortunately, flies.
It was really cool to walk around and see all their wares though.
We were pretty hungry, so we decided to grab some grub. Our group split off into a restaurant group and a street food group. I love street food and wanted to explore.
Almost every other booth was selling arepas de chocolo con queso, with a little corn husk plate. Saying this was amazing would be an understatement.
After a little snack of an arepa, a sausage, and some guanabana juice, we walked around and did some shopping, both actual and "window" (no windows in these little shacks, but you get the idea).
There was a booth selling medical marijuana, and another selling marijuana plants for your home.
Where am I again?
A picture of an American girl, wearing her new Colombian hat, drinking a German beer made in Colombia.
After walking around a bit and making some purchases (I got a new hat and some coffee whiskey liquor), we looked at our watches and noticed we were running low on time. We climbed the pyramid-thing to get one last birds-eye view of the market.
Hey, I can see my friends from here! (They're the ones waving. It's like Where's Waldo!)
We got back to the bus, where we made one more little stop to buy some of the delicious coffee we had tasted, and then it was homeward bound. We got home around 6 pm, and I promptly fell asleep all the way until the next morning.
Parque Nacional del Chicamocha, Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia
This is a bit of a late post, but I finally have internet in my apartment so I can write more!
A few weeks ago on August 6th, Colleen's host father Hugo took us and his two kids to Panachi, or Parque Nacional del Chicamocha, a national park nearby. After driving up the switchback road to the top of one mountain, we took the teleférico (cable car) down into the Chicamocha valley and back up to the park.
Hugo and his kids admiring the view from the teléferico
Hey, another teléferico goin' the other way!
The Chicamocha Canyon, with the Rio Chicamocha running through it
If you look hard enough, you can find some mountain goats havin' a great time
The sand from the Chicamocha is used a lot in construction in this area
So after a ride full of nice views and conversation, we got off and felt like we had arrived in Colombian Disney World. The park was structured like a little missionary town, but it felt very constructed and fake. The Claro sign acting like a Hollywood sign didn't help the image either (Claro is an internet/phone company). However, we soon got over that as we sipped our coffee.
The beautiful parking lot, framed by the Claro sign
Most Colombians work at least a half day on Saturdays, so we were almost the only people in the park.
¡Hola de Santander!
The kids saw this, thought they were peanuts, and started eating them... coffee beans are not the best to feed your kids.
Real or decoration? Who knows?
According to Hugo, the coffee from this area (this mountain specifically I believe) recently won "Best Coffee in the World," beating out Indonesian coffee that was harvested from the poop of animals that ate the coffee berries. Congrats Santander on beating the poop coffee!
As we drank our coffee and the kids drank their Milo (kind of like Nesquik; you can drink it cold or hot), we learned about panela, which is a type of sugar that tastes kind of like molasses; it's essentially unrefined cane sugar. They had some on the table; it was pretty tasty and it was hard to keep the kids from eating the whole bowl. The next shop over had virtual reality glasses, so we watched a few people pay for the privilege to have a Colombian man spin you around and make noises at you to further enhance the VR gear experience while your friends looked on and laughed at you. Not necessarily what I expected from a national park, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Speaking of boats, we then strolled down to the water park.
Just a little aquaparque hidden in the mountains...
The water park was little, but had a great view. We didn't spend long there; we went around the lazy river once and went down each of the two slides once and then the kids got cold so we left. However, like every pool here in Colombia, you have to wear a swim cap. Don't have one? You must buy one.
So fashionable
Colleen and her host sister rockin' the Chicamocha rosa caps
After drying off and changing back out of our swimsuits, we walked back up the mountain to the petting zoo, where we saw a llama (pronounced jyama here), a horse, a cow, a bunch of guinea pigs (which are eaten as a delicacy in Peru; just the whole animal roasted on a stick over a fire), a bunch of bunnies, couple of piggies, and some capybara (which I had never seen in real life; only on the internet!). Most importantly though, we got to feed baby goats out of milk bottles.
Cabras (goats) are Colleen's favorite baby animal. Just be careful not to say "cabron," which is a curse word.
Straight chillin'
After checkin' out all the animals, we walked further up the mountain to wash up and have some lunch. On the way, we noticed some birds of prey circling around; I hope they weren't there to snatch up the bunnies.
The restaurant had tons of cats wandering around looking for scraps. Hugo's daughter was terrified of them, poor thing.
At lunch we shared a pitcher of limonada con panela (lemonade with that panela I talked about earlier), and I had what was essentially a chicken schnitzel, breaded and with fries. I also stole a breaded-and-fried yuca off Colleen's plate. Very tasty.
We then wandered over to a museum that talked about the native people that used to live here before the Spaniards took it over. It was they who called the area Chicamocha. Legend has it that the Guane were so brave that rather than surrender to the Spaniards, they just jumped off a cliff. Now, suicide doesn't sound as brave as standing up to your conquerors, but that's just my opinion...
They bound their heads from birth for aesthetic reasons...their heads became elongated in the back and shorter from the front. A bit over-zealous for a mullet?
Since we had the kids with limited amounts of patience, we couldn't spend as much time in the museum as I would have liked, so we continued on up the mountain, admiring the view and the foliage.
No tree trunk to carve your name in? No worries! We've got you covered with succulents!
Panachi has a wonderful monument of the Colombian revolution. It has a bunch of famous revolutionary figures on a tobacco leaf (the original big export of the country). The Colombian revolution had its start in Santander, so it's a pretty big deal here.
This woman tore up the tax edict, effectively starting the revolution. She was later killed by firing squad.
The bishop put on a nice face (mask) to get into power, but then he was enslaving the Colombian people (as you can see behind him)
The say if you touch the bull's balls, you will be very fertile. Guess Colleen and I will both be bearing many children.
After exploring all the different people and their very expressive statues, we ventured over to the very top of the park, where you can see a 360° panoramic view of the whole park. However, we were getting a bit tired of walking around in the hot sun, so we hitched a ride.
Chivas used to be used as public transportation, like this one. Now they are usually used as drunk trolleys through the mountains.
We got to the top, admired the view, then stopped at the little cafe up there to quench our thirst for a bit.
There's a lot of "adventure" things we didn't do here, like the Extreme Swings that swing you over the edge of the mountain, or the ziplines that are several hundred feet above the ground.
You can trace our whole path through the park from here!
The road to Bogotá; no wonder a 1-hour flight turns into a 9-hour drive...
Colleen admiring the view
We headed back down to the teleférico, but this late in the day it was a lot windier, so the car went slower and stopped a few times, rocking in the wind...just a little bit terrifying. But we made it back alive and spent a little bit of time looking in the shops. We didn't buy anything, though the snack shops were selling the Bucaramanga special - Hormigas Culonas (large-bottomed-ants). Hugo advised us to try them first while drunk, not while hungry, so we didn't try them yet. We then piled back into the car and Hugo drove us home to the sounds of the kids' favorite CD - Justin Bieber.
