Costa Rica: Day 7 {Friday: Cafe Britt}

Friday Funday!

Today was our last full day in Costa Rica and we used it to take in some more of the BEAUTIFUL sights!  Our lovely leader, Michele booked us a tour of Cafe Britt which is a coffee and chocolate factory for the morning.  For the afternoon, she planned lunch and a tour of The La Paz waterfall.

It was WONDERFUL!  Much slower paced than the zip lining on Sunday, but we still got a workout.

This morning, we had breakfast at our usual 7am.  We seem to be running slower and more behind each day.  Ha!  No doubt, we are tired!!

Because I am tired...this will mostly be pictures!  Hope you enjoy!!

We headed to Cafe Britt around 8am for our 9am tour.  We arrived a little early so we checked out the gift shop before starting our tour.

The tour took us through the history of coffee, the growing, picking, and roasting process.  Once we learned about those, they took us over to the factory where they actually do the roasting & packaging of coffee.

The town where Cafe Britt is located is known for making masks.  So most of the street signs have this crazy looking heads or masks on them.  There are also legends about some of the masks & around the tour area there are the masks with an explanation of the legend.  Was interesting to read and some Ricardo from the work site had told us already about a few of them - which made it fun to actually see the mask.

At the start of the tour, explaining the history of how coffee came to Costa Rica.  Afterwards we all got a sample of the chocolate covered coffee beans.  YUM!!!

Next they explained to us how they grow the coffee bean trees from seeds.  They grow them in small trash bags (2 to a bag) until 1 year.  Then they are transferred to the ground to finish growing.  They will produce beans for 15 years then they are  "retired" because the quality of the beans decreases.  The most important conditions for the plants is rain & sun, soil conditions (volcanic soil), and altitude.

Next, we learned about the picking process.  All the beans at Cafe Britt are hand-picked.  Only the red ones are ripe, the green ones are not.  A worker is paid by the basket- $3 a basket.  Most can pick 20 baskets a day, which is $60/day which is really good for Costa Rica.  But harvest is only 4 months out of the year.  See basket below in picture.

Cafe Britt uses the wet milling process to prepare the beans for roasting.  They only use the beans that sink to the bottom, the ones that float are no good.  They are fermented then dried using the traditional patio drying method, where they are raked every hour.  Every part of the bean & husk are used in some way.  There is no waste.
    

Our guides then showed us the best way to make coffee and how to tell if your coffee is good/fresh.  Elias volunteered to be a taste tester! :)

The rest of the pictures of how the factory where they are dried in ovens, roasted, then packaged.  The black thing to the right is an oven.  The other, a roaster.

Roasting area

Fresh ground coffee.

The flowers around Cafe Britt were so beautiful!!!  The picture to the right are cocoa beans.  That's where chocolate comes from!!!  So cool!

We left Cafe Britt and headed to La Paz waterfall.  It was a long, bumpy ride up the mountain.  And lots of turns and curves, but the views were incredible!!  We were literally in the clouds.  You could feel the temperature dropping as we kept going up the mountain.  

Well...the mouse on my laptop stopped working and I am about to fall asleep on my keyboard, even though I had 2 cups of coffee at 9 tonight.  I also am having a hard time getting my pictures to upload so I'll take that as a sign that I need sleep! :)  I will finish day 6  part II tomorrow.  We're watching the weather back home and we're all praying for you all tonight!

Tonight, we'll sleep one last night in Costa Rica and tomorrow morning board the plane to head back home.  We are tired, but we have been filled in SO many ways this week.  We definitely are not coming back the same people we were just a mere 7 days ago.  We all can't wait to get home and hug our family's necks, as well as our church family!  We have been forever changed this week!  THANKS so much for praying for us, encouraging us, and following along with us via pictures and this blog!

See ya real soon Texas!! xoxo