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The buses really are like dragons. The spit air and blow dust up in the air from the bottom of the bus.
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So I got up a little too early and walked around Antigua around 6:30AM as I sipped some coffee. This really is a nice place. Little kids in uniforms walk in groups to school, laughing and joking around. The sun casts a nice shadow on the surrounding mountains, the tips of their shy peaks perpetually covered with clouds. The motor taxis zip around the central plaza more frequently and solitary gringos jog quietly past, down the streets. Old Guatemalan ladies sit on the benches in the park and smile as you walk by and ladies sit on the sidewalk surrounded by piles of newspapers for sale. Street cleaners sweep the sidewalks and plazas with huge brooms and pick up any extra trash they find lying around and a 60 year old man sells hot and steaming tamales from a little cart he pushes with ease over the cobbled streets. I buy a few for breakfast along with a loaf of bread (which he pulls from a seemingly 100 year old bag on his back).
Odors of a fresh new day drift past - freshly baked bread, roasted coffee, lush green forest and a slight hint of exhaust all twist together and intermingle; a slight damp chill nips at my cheeks. Store owners stand in the doorways of their shops and joke with each other across streets - the smile and nod as I walk by. As the sun gets higher, the calm pinks, blues, reds and greens of the buildings become more intense and vibrant - making a cup of coffee almost unnecessary.
I find myself at the bus station looking for the bus to San Miguel Dueñas - but they never actually say
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"Man...white people look funny..."
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where they are going on the bus itself: you have to ask someone or listen to the guy yelling where they are going from the door as they pass by. I ask a few guys which bus I need and they say I can wait with them. After a few minutes of chatting, the vibrantly multicolored bus pulls up, hissing and growling like a dragon ready to take off. I hop on and it does. We zip past coffee farms, large fields where 10's of people hunch over picking vegetables, modest houses, beautiful mountains - we dive deeper into La Ciudad Vieja, a much more relaxed part of Antigua. A little kid stares at me from his seat in front of me - I stick my tongue out at him and he smiles but continues staring. I finally get to La Finca Urías (Joel had set up a meeting with them for me) and I hop out on the bus as it slows down and speeds back up without even stopping, barreling down the road to the next stop. I knock on the gate of the farm estate and a kid comes up to see what I want. After dropping a few names, he lets me in and tells me to walk straight until I get to the house and ring the bell. I do just that, walking about a quarter mile past thousands and thousands of coffee plants, ripe and ready for picking. I can hear people talking from within the foliage but can't make
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The engine that runs the coffee de-pulpers is over 80 years old.
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out what they are saying as I walk up the long straight dirt road. When I arrive to the house (a damned nice one, if I do say so myself), I greet a few nicely dressed guys talking at the front gate and ask for Isidro Valdez. He smiles and shakes my hand and says that he will be right with me, the Illy family (think Illy coffee) has just arrived and he needs to let them in. Illy?? Woa! The group piles in the courtyard of the house and we all head into a room and look around. Isidro shows us a few pictures and explains the history of his house and estate (3 generations, over 200 years old) and we all sit down and have some coffee.
I leaned over and asked one of the Illy's about this incredible book I read (which will be for sale on the website pretty soon) called Espresso Coffee. It's one of the most technical books on anything I've ever read. Really well done. An incredible book. I mention this to her and ask if it was written by one of them.
"Si, por mi hermano", she said (yes, my brother wrote it). You'd better believe I got her card and email - as well as her brother's. MoreCoffee! has got some exciting new products in the works and I have a ton of questions on the research in that book. The folks from AnaCafe (the Guatemalan Coffee Association) were also there and we chatted a bit about some books they could help me out with. I'm meeting with them in Guatemala City tomorrow. How randomly lucky, eh? I've got a personal tour of a farm with the Illy's and AnaCafe. Awesome.
So after chatting for a while and checking out the farm (they were there just to take pictures for a book about coffee from around the world) I split off with Isidro's brother, Raul and he gave me a more in-depth tour and explanation of the processes at the finca. He took me to the nursery where I saw how they cultured shade trees and bourbon coffee plants and then to the worm farm where they raise worms for
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Who says money doesn't grow on trees?
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compost. Then to their little ponds where they raise fish for sale at the markets. We went back to the house and hung out for a bit where he showed me letters and awards from important people and organizations and then we headed to the fields where he showed me all the plants and what not. I got some pretty great pictures and learned a lot. We then headed to the in-house beneficio and I checked out how they process coffee. It was very similar to the beneficio in Antigua - just not as modern and big. Impressive none the less, though. He showed me all the old stuff from the old sugar cane days, just rusting in the corner, waiting for when he puts together the museum he has in the works. One thing that really impressed me was how well Raul treated everyone on the farm. I've spent time with the upper class in South America and they all seemed to look down on the "hired help". Not this guy. He knew everyone's name, shook hands with everyone he spoke with, affectionately yelled out hello to the coffee pickers as they walked by and generally treated everyone like a friend. It was incredible to see. When I talked to him about it, he gave me this advice: A good boss makes a good worker. Wise words. He said they even pay for the funerals for the workers that spend quite a bit of time on the farm ("It's a few thousand Quintzales - worth every cent").
So after spending a few hours doing all this, we headed into town with a few friends of his for lunch where we ate and chatted for a few hours (and polished off a bottle of whiskey) and then headed back to the estate for more chatting and drinking (hmm...before we knew it a bottle of tequila was finished off, too). The great thing about drinking with rich people, though, is that they only have the best - and you
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Going out to lunch with Don Raul.
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barely feel a thing. I snapped a few pictures of the coffee pickers bringing their coffee to the street and separating the ripe from the unripe fruit and then said goodbye to the Illy and AnaCafe group and before I knew it, it was dark - I was ready for some food and bed.
What an action packed day! These guys let a stranger into their home and I felt like family - it was incredible! It was great talking business with them, too. The coffee from this farm is award winning - you may see it on the website, soon. So below are more pictures. Like I said, lots of them will make more sense when I put together the tutorial.
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