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MoreCoffee! in Sumatra - 2007, Part 2
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Dinner Time The problem with spending a day cupping coffee is that you get very little to eat. You don't want to destroy your palate / taste buds with food so you end up either only eating bread or (usually) nothing at all. Needless to say, I was starving by the end of the day! Dariusz and his team treated me to dinner at a classy Indonesian restaurant and we spent the evening talking, drinking, laughing, eating (with our fingers - so cool!) and getting to know each other. This is my favorite part of my trips - spending time getting to know the characters that make the coffee world turn. Road Trip! Dariusz manages the Medan operation, but his main man Eko handles the relationships with the farmers out in the field (in Lintong). The next day, Eko went shopping and loaded his 4x4 with food, beer, sodas and a random assortment of junk food. The plan was to give me a tour of the Sumatran countryside so I could get a better feel for their operation and how things operate in Sumatra. I was particularly excited because Eko seemed to be the most congenial road trip companion with whom one could ever want to travel. After getting to know him better, I've come to the conclusion that I've never seen anyone smile and laugh more than this guy. He is extraordinarily patient, excited to both teach and learn - and meet new people. If there are three things I love in life, they are road trips, people who like to laugh, and Sumatran countrysides. I was most definitely excited to head out into the bush! The trip to Lintong was about 5 hours and was absolutely beautiful. It rains a lot in Sumatra so everything is brilliantly green. Also, things you don't normally see on the side of the road back home are normal in Sumatra. By "things", I mean mainly herds of water buffalo and monkeys. Yep - monkeys everywhere, just hanging out on the road sides watching cars go by. Sumatra produces a lot of rice, so there are lots of rice patties and terraces stepping up the mountainsides. The Lake Toba / Lintong region of Sumatra is home to the indigenous Batak people and their architecture is very unique: houses are built to look a lot like water buffalo...a sort of curved or arched roof with a protruding "horn" in the front and back. Check out pictures below! 160 miles, four Pepsi's, 3 bags of chips and two candy bars later, we arrived in Lintong! | ||||||||
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Lintong is a pretty out of the way place. 50cc motorbikes and tractors are the main form of transportation and most of the roads aren't paved. Small coffee farms line the roads just about everywhere you go. Coffee is certainly a big deal in Lintong. Eko operates out of a small house he and his team built in the country side. He is in charge of visiting local farmers and producers, checking out coffee quality at the local coffee markets, and spearheading initiatives that educate farmers about sustainable and quality coffee farming. He is in the business of relationships - the backbone of the coffee industry. Over the next several days, I visited several coffee farms, spoke with lots of farmers, visited Producers and saw how they dry and grade the coffee, headed to several local markets to see the goings-on there and even ended up at an elementary school to help the kids practice their English (which entailed me getting up in front of several classes and letting them ask me a ton of questions!). Pictures tell a better story than I ever could so I suggest perusing some of my photos. In the near future, I'll put together a step-by-step tutorial on how Sumatra processes its coffee. After four days of visits and traveling around via 4x4, motorbike and boat, we returned to Medan just in time for my flight back home. Intro - Sumatra Travelogue Part 1 - Sumatra Travelogue Part 2 - Sumatra Travelogue Part 3 - Sumatra Travelogue Sumatra Trip Pictures | ||||||||
