Good evening this is time to grab a cup of coffee sit down and I will tell you all about that drink you are sipping on and the work it took to get it to you....Sorry Chris I do try to get the photos in some sort of sequence but when I post them they have a mind of their own....so here goes

Got the Lucy lick wake up call at 6am, don't need an alarm clock around here, packed up a lunch got my stuff ready and headed out the door just after 8am I had to be at a down town hotel for 9.30am to be picked up by the tour bus from the Coffee Plantation that I had booked a tour. First surprise was that the bus into down town was only half full, I would have thought at that time of the morning it would have been jammed with commuter's. The Real Intercontinental hotel was the pick up point for the Plantation bus to get me. I had to wait about 20 minutes and what an interesting 20 minutes it was. There was a huge function taking place at the hotel for local people and I have never seen so many wonderfully dressed, beautiful smart women, men and children, they were all dressed to the 9's and I felt so out of place in my shorts and soccer shirt I sneaked behind a post to await the bus.

Had no trouble recognizing the coffee bus!!!!!!!!! We picked up two more passengers and then arrived at the Plantation at 11am. The tour was very well organized and first class. We were taken on an escorted tour of the small plantation, by two guides who spoke perfect English and were very funny. We then went into an amphitheater where a demonstration on how to make that perfect cup and then a movie on how coffee was first discovered. Then on to the gift shop and then an optional lunch. As I had brought my own I sat in the beautiful gardens to eat. At 2pm we returned on the bus to our pick up point. I did some grocery shopping and got back at 5pm, just as it started to throw it down and got soaked.

So here is the story on coffee, was first discovered by goat farmers in Ethiopia who noticed the goats eating these beans and then jumping around madly.....so they tried to ground the berries and that was the start of coffee. The idea moved across Europe and to the Americas. Costa Rica coffee from this plantation has the reputation of being one of the best Arabic coffee's in the world. The bushes are planted two together to conserve space because the country is so small and when the berries turn red that is the optimum time for them to be picked, around December and January and brought here to the processing plant. The first step is to remove the outer skin of the berry, then they are roasted in huge vats similar to the grape process. Then sun dried and sorted. From a small berry 2 beans are harvested the rest of the berry is mulched and used as compost in the fields, so there is a lot of waste. From a 25 pound weight of berries picked a yield of about 200 cups of coffee can be manufactured.

It was a very interesting day and the learning of coffee and beans was worth while. It is not possible to describe the aroma's that circulated through the plantation, they were very pleasant even for a devout tea drinking Englishman!!!!!!

Tried to capture rush hour traffic on the way home....some of the flowers and plants in the gardens were awesome. One thing I forgot to mention the coffee bushes that Cafe Britt uses are natural, this is a volcanic country and the surrounding soil is great for growing, they also plant other trees in the same field, lemon trees, bananas this is for forestation and also shade and I think the single most important growing need is climate, altitude, sun and rain and drainage, I guess that is a few more than one, but you get the picture. Now enjoy that coffee!!!!!!