So, by all means, lets go to Costa Rica. Let’s drink rum drinks and hang from our ankles by ziplines and surf with like minded toney blonde people and run rivers and gawk at birds in organized bus tour groups and stay in fancy hotels and buy trinkets and insult the natives with bad Spanish and invade the rainforests and all that. Or, let’s not. Lets do a different kind of Costa Rican vacation. Yes, let’s do it that way.
Who Needs Signs?
The approach into the Juan Santamaria Airport is breathtaking, to say the least. The plane from Newark approached from the east, flying low through a corridor of high, mist-shrouded peaks, then banked steeply left and dipped to skirt high mountains to the south of the city before landing in the middle of a patchwork of farm fields and small, neat houses.
Rental cars in foreign countries are funny. The particulars about the car we wanted to rent (size and price) took a matter of minutes. The legal disclaimers, daily rates, risks, translations, puzzled looks and initials here and there on a stack of paperwork rivaling only taking out a mortgage from a money grubbing US bank (I’m not bitter), all related to various assumptions of risk, took nearly an hour.
The nice man then highlighted the path we were to take to our first destination in yellow – cut through town on this road, take a left at the park, then just go straight for 45 minutes until you get there. Not said was this – do not, under any circumstances, deviate from this route, or you are toast.
It is a strange characteristic of directions in Costa Rica that one will always be told to simply “turn left” here, or “turn right” there – but yet once the unsuspecting driver gets in the vicinity of this intersection there are many such possible turns, and that only by living there for some years, does one know which is the right one. It was with this newbie ignorance that we missed the left at the park. Our ship then righted itself, but minutes later, we missed another turn, and then we were done for. There are no street signs in all of San Jose. So it was ever so easy to get lost. Add to this the aggressive Costa Rican driving style, myriad one-way streets, throngs of pedestrians, stray animals, an errant ice cream cart (!), honking and annoying motorcyclists, and within moments, my vision of blender drinks and a savage tan gave way to a mission of shear survival.
His name was Alex. We found him at a bus stop. He was lost too, but he had a compass of a sort the allowed him to find his bearings. And after 45 minutes of searching and turning, he found us the right road, hopped out and was on his way. And so it was, that we at last were on the road to Cartago. And yes, this was not the direct 50-minute drive the Hertz guy promised. But, I felt a sort of victory after emerging from the savage San Jose traffic unscathed. And now I could have a blender drink.
Orosi, Sweet Orosi
We approached Orosi in our little Rent-a-Jeep with very high expectations, I must say. Friends from Freeport had stayed there, one of the coffee farms we were going to visit recommended it, and the guidebooks gushed relentlessly about our destination, The Orosi Lodge.
The unveiling of Orosi is very, very cool. From San Jose, we inched through downtown Cartago (a crowded, yet mercilessly brief smaller version of San Jose), then got lost again TWICE (they didn’t have signs either), then made it into Paraiso and at long last found a sign saying “OROSI →” Phew.
A few meandering turns down the road, we crested a small hill, and on the other side, paradise was revealed – the beautiful, lush green Orosi Valley. Far below, a narrow river snaked through fields of coffee. Mountains, curtained by mist, disappeared into the distance. Everywhere, the droopy leaves and vines and flowers of a thick jungle covered the hills along the road. And it was tranquil and non-citylike and we knew where we were and at last we could relax. After the first of what would be many steep, twisty descents to follow, we bottomed out in the valley floor, and there, on either side of the road were magnificent fields of coffee. My serious love affair with coffee is yet three years old, and this was my first trip to a place where coffee was grown. I skidded to a stop and leapt out to hug the trees.
The plants were just beautiful. About six feet high, as thick as a bush can be, the coffee trees on one side of the road carpeted an open river valley and on the other, they lived beneath a thick canopy of shade trees. And, at this low elevation, there was no fruit remaining on the trees, as their picking season had ended for the year. But, by rooting around a little, I found a few scant red “cherries,” as they are called, and Tanji and I each ate one. They were harder than I expected, with a thick skin and thin layer of sticky, very sweet fruity layer covering the pits, which are what we know as coffee beans.
The town of Orosi is small, well kept, and very pretty. It sits at the bottom of a wide, beautiful valley, and a short main street of only 12-15 blocks is home to several “sodas” (the Costa Rican name for small casual lunch counters or cafes), a grocery store and a couple of small restaurants. Beyond the main street, a hill rises and turns before the large coffee mill that is the largest business in the area.
The Orosi Lodge was started eight years ago by a German couple, Andy and Connie, who settled on this town after a lifetime of world travel. As they told us a few days later, this town won out as a place to live – essentially winning a competition in their minds with every other place they had traveled and lived. It was quite an endorsement.
We loved staying there. Our abode (a separate building called the Chalet) sat up behind the lodge on a residential street, and each day the adorable kids from the neighborhood greeted us as we went to and fro. On the second level, we had a sheltered porch that looked out over the mountains behind, the town below and the valley beyond. A constant parade of birds zipped by us, and looking in any direction could result in a zombie-like stupor of discovery, as animals, plants, birds and people emerged from the rich landscape. Mornings began with the squawking of an overanxious rooster from a nearby farm, and in the evenings, we heard the comforting sounds of a small town shutting down for the night. What a nice place.
Madonna, Lankaster and Cristina
From the standpoint of a travel agent, Costa Rica offers impressive-sounding activities including canopy ziplines, “wilderness lodges,” and volcano tours, but we very deliberately steered ourselves away from all that in favor of local color. We began our first full day in Cartago, founded in 1563 by the Spanish colonial governor, and found that our many hours of driving the day before had given us new confidence to drive more in the Costa Rican way (aggressively, without regard for traffic or pedestrians).
Really, we were just glad to be there – so after parking near the famed Los Angeles Basilica we wondered aimlessly among sleepy streets, more or less looking for the big central market in the heart of downtown. My Spanish is only OK, and Tanji speaks French and some Latin, so we were essentially hopeless in communicating with others – but we did a great job pointing at pastries in the many bakeries and paying for them. My failed attempts at asking people where to find the public market led us astray several times, but at last we saw the block-long sea of fresh fruits and vegetables that framed the entrance and ducked inside.
To me, these markets are the best part of traveling, and we stayed there for a long time. Aisle by aisle, we explored the sites and smells and revelations of this important gathering place for the town. Small food counters (sodas), fish and meats, exotic vegetables, toys, shoe repair, pet food, stray dogs, spices and sauces and people shopping for the week formed a delightful maze and gave us a great introduction to the pulse of Costa Rica. After loading up on fruits and veggies for guacamole, we walked back over to the Basilica, which is home to the revered patron saint of Costa Rica, La Negrita. On this day, the Basilica swarmed with people, as two days earlier a major earthquake had devastated an area just north of Alajuela (west of San Jose), and many had come to pray and pay their respects to those who lost their homes and lives. The soaring, beautiful, wooden interior (rebuilt in 1926 after an earthquake) set off gold adornments, stained glass windows and antique light fixtures – and it was very moving to see the column of several hundred people inching down the aisle on their knees toward the alter. We never found the Madonna Negra, not realizing until much later (um . . . now, in fact) that she is only eight inches tall!
We drove back through Paraiso, had lunch, and then drove a short way up the easterly road toward Turrialba to an afternoon appointment at the Café Cristina coffee farm and mill.
Café Cristina had been recommended to us both by my coffee importer and by a group of friends from Freeport, with whom Ernie and Linda, the owners, had stayed for a time just a few months ago. Cristina is a unique operation for Costa Rica, combining a small organic coffee farm, a micromill and a roastery all in one place – and all the coffee grown there is roasted onsite and sold both inside the country and internationally.Ernie and Linda were great to us. Ernie took us out into their fields, where the coffee trees drooped with fresh cherries as they awaited the second picking of the season, and patiently told us all about the plants, the work of an organic coffee farmer and the process of picking the fruit each year. We then followed a short set of paths to their micromill, where, on the afternoon of a morning picking, the cherries are mechanically stripped of their skin and sticky mucilage, then laid out to dry on broad patios to dry in the sun. After being dried for 6-8 days (in the sun, and if necessary in a larger mechanical dryer), the coffee is stored “in parchment” (a thin husk, similar in a way to a thin shell of a pistachio nut) until they are ready to roast it (or in the case of other farms, until it is ready for export). Then, the parchment is milled off (to be reused to fuel the large dryer) and the coffee sorted for density – in their case resulting in a small amount of second tier beans that are sold to a broker in San Jose.
Café Cristina is regarded as a pioneer in the development of micromills. Later in the trip, we toured many of these, and in these cases, farms were able to buy off the shelf equipment for all the functions of the mill, but here, Ernie had cobbled together the setup using second hand equipment, ingenuity and parts from other types of farm technology. Linda is one lucky roaster, I would say – spending her time in a nice, high ceiling room with a wall open to the jungle covered only in a coarse mesh. Their beans are roasted light, medium and dark and were available (mostly ground) in markets throughout the area and to international buyers via mail order. Really nice people, and a really nice place. If you go, they offer a variation of our experience as a tour, and this would be a great way for you to see up close the full cycle of coffee from seed to cup.
It was still early, so we headed back up the road to Cartago to the wondrous Lankester Gardens. The Gardens, established in 1917 by an English botanist, display more than 3,000 plant species (including 1,000 varieties of orchid) in a placid setting ranging over 27 acres. We had the place to ourselves that day, and the experience was a very special one. And so, after a day of rich experiences, we retired to Orosi for a dinner of Imperial beer, melt in your mouth pineapple and guacamole, and wondered as we ate how such a day could have felt so very relaxing. Nice. Nano, Victor and Rudolfo
Gosh, aren’t connections great? So, Tanji used to work with Ruth. Who is married to Kevin, who in turns works for a company that does business in Costa Rica. Through this he knows a guy Horacio, who responded to my note by saying that his girlfriend has a cousin Rudolfo who owns a coffee farm in Orosi, and then sent me his phone number so I called one day and talked to his son (Rudolfo Junior) who asked his dad (who was fishing at the time) whether we might be able to see his farm while we were there and he said yes he would be happy to help us.
We arranged to meet Rudolfo around noontime, so we went down to the desk and asked if they could suggest a nice two-hour hike in the area. Andy whipped out a cryptic map and sent us off into the mountains to find the one they call Nano. We were to climb up, up up, turn right after the last house and pick our way up a steep canyon until the awesome waterfall, then backtrack a bit and continue upwards until we found a small shack. There would be Nano, who would give us a tour of his beautiful coffee farm and then guide us over the mountain and show us how to get back.
So we did all that. The path up took us into lush, wet jungle, where all the leaves got bigger and there were flowers everywhere. The going was slippery en route to the waterfall, but neither of us fell, and Tanji found two fossils. Nano wasn’t home. We met his three dogs, one of whom cowered when I went to pet it (which made me question Nano’s parenting skills), his chickens and a huge moth living near his house – then went to try to figure out how to get out of there.Instinct alone guided us hither and yon until we emerged on a clear path through a neatly tended and very steep coffee farm. We encountered two pickers who told us this was not Nano’s farm, but that of the Martinez family. We were on the right track and began the very steep descent back into town. Minutes later a very nice man emerged from out of the coffee trees and introduced himself as Victor Martinez – and what followed over the next hour was the wonderful wonderful communication that occurs when a group of people who don’t speak the same language WANT to communicate and make the best of the tools they have, hands and gestures and smiles and the few words they knew.
Victor’s goal was to introduce us to his town, his family and his life. He spoke very little English and we spoke very little Spanish. And we had a nice time with him before saying our goodbyes just feet away from the Lodge at the bottom of the hill. We went down the road to Soda Luz and had a traditional Costa Rican lunch plate called casado, a pretty arrangement of chicken (or meat or fish), rice, beans, salad and fried plantains. On schedule, Rudolfo arrived to pick us up, and along with his daughter and son in law, we drove high into the mountains above Orosi, winding through fields of coffee and tall, stately evergreens.
We parked before a small, very cool house, constructed by Rudolfo of native timber (all milled with a chainsaw!) and bamboo. It was exquisite in its simplicity and its design, and the view of the entire Orosi valley was amazing. He told us that the house served as a retreat for him when he wanted to get away from his day job as a physician in Cartago.
We then went out front to find a large tractor attached to a deep wagon, along with a man introduced as the farm foreman and another worker who helped with the coffee harvest. “Get in,” he said, gesturing to the wagon. Tanji and I gulped, then climbed aboard. The foreman fired up the tractor, and we rumbled off down the mountain . . . and for the next fifteen minutes, we were treated to a trip through the expansive coffee farm from the best possible vantage point. I glanced at Tanji and I knew how special we felt this all was.
We then came upon a group of coffee pickers, each surrounded by an assortment of bulging plastic bags – and the tractor slowed to a halt. The pickers lined up, and one by one, emptied the contents of their bags into a plastic paint bucket, which was passed up to the helper standing in the bed of the wagon. Each bucket was dumped into the wagon, and when it was empty, the helper tossed a yellow poker chip into the bucket.This continued until that picker had finished his harvest, and the next one began. The poker chips were then exchanged for cash from Rudolfo, who explained that each bucket equated to a standard unit of measure called a cajuela (this is the square box in the photos), and that 40 of these in turn filled a fanega (two of the rectangular boxes).
We were interested in the math here, so I will share it with you. For each bucket/cajuela, the picker is paid a little over $2. There is actually a minimum wage for these in Costa Rica of $1.20, but no one will work for this amount; in the Orosi Valley alone, there are more than 700 coffee farms, and they all need pickers at the same time of year (roughly December-January), so it is a sellers market.
We left behind that group and continued on in the tractor, with Tanji and I standing in what was now a knee-deep sea of sticky, fresh coffee cherries. Soon we came to another group of pickers, clearly a rank below the others – there were a bunch of young teenagers here (who can work as long as they are with a relative), and for the most part, their total wages were less, meaning they picked at a slower pace. But, one very happy picker had achieved 12 cajuelas, which was huge for him, and he was very happy!
We dropped Rudolfo off at his house to pick up his car, and continued down a steep, straight road toward the valley floor. As came into the valley below the farm, we turned off the road at a small building with a trough coming out from the base of it above the road, the foreman backed into the building, and the two farm workers who had ridden down with us set about unloading the cherries from the wagon into a large hopper on the floor of the building. The name of a large company was stenciled above the loading area, and it dawned on Tanji and I that the farmer was relinquishing his crop at this point – and as we thought further about the number of these buildings we had seen, it was clear that all this coffee, from most of these 700 farms were all being transferred into one very large batch. The coffee then would be sold by the name of the region (Ososi Valley) or by the name of the processor (Orlich), but that any connection to the farm was at this point lost.
I felt sad here, like I was watching a beautiful heirloom tomato be mixed into a can of supermarket tomato sauce – but this is the way most coffee is processed. At the transfer station, the going rate for a hundredweight of coffee (one fanega) was $120, or what works out to about $1.20/pound for dried green beans (like what we use as a starting point for roasting). Of this $120, $80 is paid to the pickers, yielding the farmer $.40/pound for their coffee. Costa Rica is regarded as having one of the highest labor costs in the world for coffee pickers, so it is a bit sobering to imagine what pickers earn in less developed countries.
Rudolfo also told us that the vast majority of coffee picking in Costa Rica is done by locals, with very few workers imported from Panama or Nicaragua. He employs three families of Indians who came in from the reservation that straddles in the Costa Rica/Panama border, and on the way down the mountain, we had passed the converted horse stables they live in. The accommodations weren’t bad, I would say, and he had built a shower/bathroom at the end of the building to support them. Rudolfo’s medical practice needed him, so he took us back to Orosi and made arrangements in route for us to tour the large central beneficio (mill) the next afternoon.
We had passed a very awesome soda perched over the wide Orosi River, and quickly jumped in the Rent-a-Jeep to go back there for a beer. A gregarious new friend, Sergio, rescued us from the local wacko, lectured the proprietor in Spanish about the grease content of the fries we ordered and shared great stories of local color. Hanging Squash, Jesus, Secret Flowers, Mud and Denial
The next morning, we got up early, enjoyed some of our newly created SumaRica blend (the Sumatra we brought with us mixed with the local coffee, which was a little too light for our tastes) and headed out to play tourist. We drove back up the now-familiar road to Paraiso, hung out at the pullout that overlooks the Orosi Valley with some friendly mountain bikers (which were everywhere!), then began a long eastward loop around the Lake Cachi watershed. From Paraiso, the road twists down a steep but not too steep mountain road through lush jungle before bottoming out in the agricultural hamlet of Ujarras. What a setting for these farms! Amid the encroaching jungle, well tended fields dot the landscape, and one of the most interesting crops to see was the chayote squash, with large tracts of plants suspended six feet from the ground, giving the illusion of floating.
We got lost again, of course, then made our way to the ruins of the Iglesia de Nuestra Senorade la Limpia Concepcion, built in 1693, and best known as the home of a wayward painting of the Virgin that kept returning to same spot – thus forcing the locals to leave the church there in the face of floods that kept destroying the building. Amid an escort of very friendly and likely abandoned dogs (Costa Rica has great abandoned dogs), we walked slowly through the pretty grounds and adjacent farm fields. A nice morning.
We continued around the lake, next stopping at the shop of the wonderful Macedonio Quesada. Macedonio’s shop, built of thin bamboo and playful carved silhouettes, houses his large collection of figurines carved from the roots of coffee trees, all for sale at very low prices. We bought some as gifts, along with a large carved head of either Jesus or Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and continued on our way.
We were rebuffed in our efforts to gain entrance to a large cluster of massive flower greenhouses, and were told later by our hosts that these were supersecret facilities owned by one of the five companies that controls most of the ornamental flowers in the world. Seems as though industrial espionage is big in that business, and competitors have been know to sneak harmful pests into these places under the guise of a tour. Gosh, I thought they were just pretty flowers – I didn’t want to know all that.
Our next stop was the very large, yet mostly inaccessible Tapanti National Park. This massive park (>58,000 hectares) stretches from the Orosi Valley all the way south to Cerro de la Muerte (we’ll be there several days later), but the only public access is via a small trail system just up the road from Orosi. The rest is there simply for the sake of preservation – it is so very cool that Costa Rica does that as a country in so many places. As we climbed, the road went from pavement to dirt, and it was obvious this was a region that gets a LOT of rainfall. The peaks in the park receive well over 300 inches each year. En route, we crossed a bridge over the wide Rio Grande de Orosi, and a great number of very large earthmovers were at work in the middle of the riverbed rechanneling the force of the water, which in years of higher than usual rainfall, threatens the whole valley with flooding. Already, we had seen the remnants of two large bridges that had washed out and numerous mudslides and road repairs.
We went to Tapanti with high hopes of seeing quetzals, jaguars, macaws and other exotic wildlife. In reality, we saw nary a butterfly. We did see a large number of jungle plants and lots of mud. I saw mud from a closer vantage point than Tanji after taking a header coming down a steep slope and sliding a good ways down the mountainside.
On the way back to town, we encountered a very friendly raccoon-like creature in the midst of a deserted stretch of road. It was perhaps too friendly (as in very hungry or even rabid), so we rolled up the windows, took a few snaps and kept going. That afternoon, we had an appointment to visit one of the two large coffee mills that serves the Orosi Valley, but it was not to be. When we arrived at the mill, an office assistant responded to our attempts to ask for our contact with an astonishing display of attitude, rapid-fire Spanish and unhelpfulness. I explained in polite English how I was the senior international buyer for the Starbucks chain and how she had just cost her company a multi-year contract worth approximately $50 million dollars annually, smiled and we left.
The Micromills of Tarrazu After a relaxing final night in Orosi, we again hit the road to go meet our new friend Tim O’Brien in San Jose. Tim first came to the mountains of the Tarrazu region some years ago working for the Peace Corps on a project to improve the prospects for blackberry farmers, fell in love with the town of San Martin, and got into coffee farming. This led to his installation of one of the first micromills in the region, and now he and his partner operate an export company set up to act as a distribution conduit for small mills in Costa Rica and Panama. Through a contact I made via an Internet coffee forum, Tim agreed to show us around the Tarrazu region and give us a look at the micromills. With grit and determination, we made our way through the heart of San Jose, having predictably missed the turn we were supposed to take that would lead us on the more friendly route around the city. After only getting lost a few times, we found our way to the large, central Sabana Park, hung out for a bit at a great youth recreation center (kids there have it good) and then met up with Tim. We drove from there to his office in nearby Escazu, left our car there and headed for the mountains in Tim’s jeep.
After a nice drive up and out of the Central Valley, we crested a ridge, and there before us were the rolling mountain valleys of Tarrazu. Of the seven distinct coffee-growing regions in Costa Rica, Tarrazu is the most famous, producing high grown coffees of great richness and versatility. Coffee blanketed the mountainsides as far as the eye could see, stretching in a band from the valley floor to just below the peaks (coffee grows as high as 2,000 meters there). Tim pointed out some of the farms we would visit that day and explained how the two main valleys of the Tarrazu region ran from east to west, terminating at the Pacific Ocean. 
Over the next two days, we toured nine farms, each with their own micromills, and met the wonderful, impassioned farmers of each. These farmers have invested in their small milling operations to liberate them from the traditional model of small farmers selling coffees to a large central mill, in the process losing any special characteristics of their coffee to the great soup pot of pooled coffee. With a small mill, a farmer can keep extremely small lots (as small as 3-5 commercial bags) distinct, and these can be very, very special coffees that command prices well beyond the standard rates paid to the farmers who supply the larger beneficios. This, in turn, allows roasters to get to know a farm and its coffees, and then forge relationships under which they are able to buy these coffee they know so well each year. 
With this arrangement also comes risk. Micromill technology is not inexpensive, and it also doesn’t run itself. Those who adopt these approaches must be as much engineer as farmer in operating their businesses, and they must be entrepreneurial in seeking markets for their coffees – because higher value coffee that doesn’t have a buyer goes right back into the pool and commands the same prices as all the others. Tim is doing a great thing for all the farmers he serves, in trying to pull together container-sized export lots of coffee, open up new markets (like roasters of our scale) and find creating ways of packaging and distributing these coffees. 
The passion of these farmers was incredibly energizing. They know the earth and they respect it. They know coffee as a plant, the weather patterns, the needs of the soil and the impacts of the varying terroirs found throughout their farms. They care about environmental issues, such as water usage and quality, waste handling, judicious use of soil treatments and recycling of input and output of the farm. They have totally embraced the opportunities of the micromill system, striving to learn more about how they can impact the taste of their coffees and the rewards this brings them. We saw small roasting machines and cupping (the formal tasting process used by those in the coffee trade) equipment in several mills. Two farmers whose coffee had been a finalist in the Costa Rica “Cup of Excellence” competition last year proudly displayed they bags from this small lot of coffee, and we could see they were working toward being there again.
We saw great creativity at work. On Tim’s own farm, he takes the fermenting mucilage (the sticky layer inside the skin that surrounds the beans) and runs it into “biobags,” which captures the methane gas being generated and sends it off through a very long hose to the house of a nearby farmer, who uses it for cooking fuel. Another farmer takes the pulp (skin) of the coffee cherries and mixes a special food mixture used to feed his cows. All the farmers recycle the parchment waste (the husk that surrounds the beans; this is milled off just before export) to fire the mechanical dryers they use at the end of the drying process to “finish” the coffee. Old roots from coffee plants that no longer produce are used for the same purpose. And, farmer after farmer showed us the steps they take to conserve water – and one drank from his water supply to show us the purity of the water. What an amazing experience for us. 
At the end of our first day in Tarrazu, Tim took us to one final micromill, Montes de Oro, where we spent the night with his great friends Emilio, Lara and their kids in a beautiful mountain cottage. There, Emilio had a small home coffee roaster similar to one I used to own, and it was with great honor that I roasted the coffee of a farmer for that farmer to give him some tips on how to use it. It was such a peaceful place to sleep too. And I have to mention the passion fruit. As we drove along a high ridge through different farm fields, we passed an orchard bearing an unfamiliar fruit. When we asked about it, Tim replied, “that’s a passion fruit – I’ll get you one!” In a trice, he had stopped the car, maneuvered over the barbed wire fence bordering the field (he knew the guy) and handed us each a fruit and passed Tanji a fragrant purple flower from one of the vines.
We looked at the thing with curiosity – do you peel it? Bite into it? Cook it? He laughed, and told us the reason we didn’t know what to do was that they were generally too delicate to export, and that we should just break the thing in half and go for it. So we did, and I have to say they are well named. The fruit in two like an egg, spilling forth a white nectar populated with watermelon-like seeds, and to eat it you basically dive right in.
The Mountain of DeathThe next morning, we began with quick visits to three more coffee mills. One of these was the “dry mill” used by Tim’s company. Here, the parchment layer on the outside of the green coffee beans is milled off, then before shipping, the coffee is sorted in various ways to remove defective (low density or off color) beans and ensure uniformity of size (which ensures consistent roasting). Next, we went to drop off a bag of coffee from his trunk at the farm/mill of a guy who is something of a packrat and tinkerer. Amid a patched together micromill setup, he had a beautiful old Italian coal-fired roaster (now converted to gas) and a great collection of reed canastas, the traditional baskets used for collecting coffee cherries. Sadly, the pickers now use baskets made of plastic. I wished the man was home, because he seemed like a lot of fun!
Our last stop of the morning took us out of Tarrazu and into the town of Alajuela, part of the Central Valley coffee region. Here, we visited the farm and mill Brumas del Zurquí, which specializes in “honey coffees,” where the sticky mucilage layer is left on the beans prior to drying rather than being removed in the milling process. When this is done correctly (for it is not an easy process to control), the result is a coffee with greatly increased depth and body – and one that works well in espresso. The story of the farm is unique in this day and age. On all sides, they are surrounded by the suburbs of Alajiuela, and we were told that it was only because of a true passion for coffee that this farm survives, as they could have sold the land for a great profit to the real estate developers who encroached on their land. Not so lucky was the famed Tres Rios coffee-growing region to the northeast of San Jose. Very little coffee remains there in the face of a housing boom that has sucked up a large majority of the farmland.
We had a nice lunch with Tim at a small organic café on a side street in Escazu, joined he and his partner for a round of cupping the coffees from some of the farms we had visited and then hit the road for a journey up the Mountain of Death. Our destination was a very small town called San Gerardo de Dota, located at over 2,500 meters on the edge of Cerro de la Muerte. San Gerardo had been recommended to us by both Andy and Connie (at the Orosi Lodge) and Tim as being a beautiful place to spend the last two days of the trip – and one that was away from the mainstream tourist scene.
We drove back through Cartago (actually easy to find this time), then headed south on the Interamericano highway (which runs all the way through the core of Central America). Quickly we began climbing, leaving the Central Valley behind and heading into the mountain range on the eastern border of the Tarrazu region. The high clouds turned to dense fog, the road narrowed, and the remnants of many mudslides resulted in a patchwork of road repairs.
Though The Mountain of Death sounds like something from a Tolkien novel and suggests being the namesake of auto accidents on the wet, twisty roads, the name actually refers to the struggles of immigrants making the long journey over the summit from Panama and points southward. It wasn’t a long drive, maybe 50 miles or so, and within a few hours we reached the small turnoff for San Gerardo. Down, down, down, went the steep dirt road, and I was thankful for our little Jeeplet. We descended well over 2,000 feet into a vibrant, lush valley, dripping with small creeks and with trees festooned with passenger plants and vines of all descriptions. As the road began to flatten, we turned into the grounds of the Trogan Lodge (named for a local exotic bird).
The Trogan Lodge is a set of about 15 small bungalows, each with two rooms, rising up the mountainside above a central restaurant and trout pond. The setting was stunning.
In reading the guidebooks about the place, I wish I hadn’t seen the part about this being a popular destination for package tours, but there it was. The “package” quality of the place was reinforced when we checked in, as the desk clerk worked his way through a very long list of amenities offered by the hotel, each with its own price tag. Among these was the “quetzal tour,” for just $25, and he informed us that to do this, we should be downstairs at 6:00 the next morning. We went to get a beer and watched in astonishment as one of the package tourists completely patronized the poor bartender, using a combination of pidgin Spanish, counting on her fingers and pure ugly Americanisms. We beat a quick retreat, returned later for a really bad buffet dinner and called it a night.
The next morning, determined to escape the hotel restaurant, we set off town the road into the valley in search of another option for breakfast. As we were leaving the grounds, the package people came up the road, returning from their morning quetzal tour. They told us that, for a very slight fee, the avocado farmer down the road we take us into his orchard where the quetzals like to dine on the fruit of his trees. For just $2, the farmer’s great daughter took us up the road into the orchard, peered around into the thicket of green before us and pointed out the flurry of color and plumage that is the world’s most beautiful bird. And then, if that weren’t exciting enough, she found us another as we were walking back to the main road – but this time, we were less than 10 feet away. We tiptoed closer and closer, snapping away, in awe that we were several arm lengths away from the creature that is the basis for many peoples decision to vacation in that part of the world.
After getting our fill of cuteness and color, we turned to go and encountered the hilarious sight of at least sixty hushed birdwatchers who had snuck up behind us while we were in our resplendent quetzal stupor. How their megabus made it down that road is beyond me. We continued down the road and found a nice little inn/restaurant, where we had a great meal of fresh peach juice from the valley, fresh fruits and the local breakfast staple, gallo pinto (beans and rice). Just outside the window where we were sitting, a hummingbird feeder attracted a steady parade of exotic little birds, some no bigger than my finger. 
After breakfast, we ambled down the road with the destination of a somewhat dangerous waterfall trail the waitress had told us about. I have been aware of the concept of biodiversity for a long time, but our walk that morning made me really understand it. After the turnoff for the restaurant, we dropped further into the valley for another three miles or so, and every inch of that walk was fascinating – we passed hundreds of different plants, fruits, birds and butterflies, and it was just so beautiful. En route, we stopped by a small inn advertising mud baths and made arrangements for later that night. 
As the road jogged right, we followed a sign for the waterfall trail and made our way into the thick, verdant jungle along a trail that paralleled the rapidly flowing river. I would by lying if I said that fantasies of being Indiana Jones weren’t running through my head. We descended for an hour or so on a well-maintained path along the river. Vines tumbled from the trees above and wrapped themselves around their trunks. It was hard to tell where one plant ended and another began – with some trees bearing host to dozens of smaller succulents and brambles. A cacophony of birds echoed through the trees, though few of them could be seen. Sounds of rushing water came from all around, with mountainside creeks sometimes drowning out the river. We came to the Temple of Skulls under a hailstorm of poison darts. I, with my bullwhip in hand, clenched Tanji to my side, whispering that I would protect her at all costs. I deflected the machine gun fire from the dangerous foreign army lurking in the trees, swooped up the fabulous jewel-encrusted talisman that was the object of our Quest, tucked it into my weathered leather jacket, and with a nibble step or two leapt into the awaiting biplane and flew us out of there.
Not really.
But we did cross a bridge high above a beautiful waterfall system and then came upon a long, amazing set of cables and ladders that allowed us to traverse along the steep muddy hillside above the river, and these finally ended at what had been a long suspension bridge. This had washed away during a recent flood and prevented access to a still bigger waterfall downstream.Happy and now quite tired, we retraced our steps and, six hours after we had left the hotel to have breakfast, we arrived back at our room and laughed at how a simple stroll down the road had turned into a twelve-hour jungle adventure. The magic of Costa Rica.
It’s funny how some of the best experiences in travel come from the simplest of events. That night, we went down the road from our hotel to the small inn and restaurant where we had made the reservation for the mudbath and a dinner to follow. Our exuberant hostess Sirita met us at the door and led us to a large steamroom, now billowing with mint-infused mist. After forty-five minutes of inhaling the delicious heat, she returned with vats of a thin mud and a paintbrush and covered us and herself with a thin coating – she was trying it too because she had just taken the job of manager and wanted to experience the same things her guests would.
After twenty minutes of mud infusion, we rinsed off, showered and followed some long hallways back to the main part of the inn to get ready for dinner. It was so beautiful! Since we arrived, it had gotten dark outside, and all the rooms of the public areas of the lodge were now illuminated with hundreds of candles. A small fire flickered in an old metal fireplace built into a corner of the room. We enjoyed some drinks before the fire, and she then brought us into the dining room, where it soon became clear that we were their only guests that night.
There were three staff on duty, Sirita, their cook Anna and the groundskeeper Geraldo. Since it felt silly just sitting there like that, we suggested that we all eat together, and they agreed. And for the next two hours, we enjoyed a very special meal in very special company.
By the light of all those candles, picking our way through our halting Spanish, Sirita’s translations, Geraldo’s tentative English and Anna’s boisterous Spanish, we all got to know each other, sharing tales of where we lived, where we grew up, our governments and our lives. This night was the high point of our trip.
Dumping the Car
All through our stay, the diatribe about the dangers of driving in Costa Rica from the Hertz guy on the first day had been living in the back of my mind as we navigated through mud, mountainsides, slippery roads, aggressive truck drivers and spaced-out food vendors popping up in the middle of traffic. So, pulling our mud-covered Jeepette into the rental return parking lot was a form of victory for me. We spent our last night just down the road from the airport in a cut-rate hotel called the Millennium II. It was cut rate because the hotel sits directly at the business end of the airport runway, and there’s just something about having a screaming passenger jet go right across the top of your cranium that messes with your sleep. It was a long night.
Looking Back
That was a special vacation on so many levels. We learned a lot. We met lots of friendly, engaging people. We saw unmatched beauty. We relaxed and read and didn’t feel rushed, and didn’t think at all about the US economy. We were reminded of how easy it can be to live simply. And we’ll be back, definitely. That’s all, until next time. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
