Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(
Zurich International (17km/10 miles).
ambassadorhotel.ch). $$
Lady's First,
Mainaustrasse 24 (
&
41/44/380-80-10;
www.ladysfirst.ch).
L
$$$
Hotel Ambassador
, Falken-
strasse 6 (
&
41/44/258-98-98;
www.
Coffee
417
Don Juan Coffee Plantation
The Golden Bean
Monteverde, Costa Rica
The very name Costa Rica means “rich
coast,” and anyone looking at the dense
jungles of this Central American nation
should have guessed that its rich volcanic
soil would be a planter's dream—if only
the right crop could be found. In 1748, the
first cuttings of Arabica coffee plants
brought from Cuba were planted on high
cloud-forest slopes, where temperatures
were moderate and the climate moist—
and it became clear at once that coffee (or
as Costa Ricans call it, “the golden bean”)
had found a fitting home.
Costa Rican coffee—prized for its
smooth taste, much like Colombian—has
become one of the world's premier cof-
fees. That may have something to do
with the fact that nearly three-quarters of
the country's crop is raised on small fam-
ily-run farms that can afford the labor-
intensive practices that yield high-quality
beans, such as contour planting and hand-
picking.
Until world coffee prices began to fall in
1990, coffee was Costa Rica's chief source
of income. It has since been replaced by
tourism, although coffee tourism is a bud-
ding trend. While half a million tourists
have learned about Costa Rica's coffee
industry from the slickly packaged tour at
Café Britt
(
&
800/GO-BRITT
[800/462-
7488]; www.cafebritt.com), in the San Jose
suburb San Rafael de Heredia, diehard cof-
fee lovers will get much more out of a trip
to Monteverde to the
Don Juan Coffee
Estate.
This organic, fair-trade plantation
will initiate visitors into the mysteries of
coffee growing, and the Monteverde Bio-
logical Cloud Forest Preserve is nearby.
At the Don Juan plantation, visitors ride a
gaudily painted ox-drawn cart around the
orchards planted with coffee bushes of vari-
ous sizes, from seedlings to 30-year-old vet-
erans. (If you come in the winter during
harvest season, you'll see workers meticu-
lously examining the red coffee cherries to
see which are ready to be picked.) You then
walk through the on-site mill, or
beneficio,
where the husk is removed, the raw bean
soaked in water, and then beans are sorted
in a long water-filled trough (inferior beans
float to the surface; premium beans sink).
You'll peek into a greenhouse, where beans
lie drying for 6 weeks—it takes longer in this
supermoist climate—and end up in the mill
where they are finally shelled and roasted.
Although larger operations have more
machines and shortcuts, the Don Juan oper-
ation, which has been here since the 1950s,
follows time-honored methods, as the bilin-
gual guides explain. It's amazing how crude
most of the machines in the
beneficio
look—
but they get the job done. The tour takes
about 2 hours and ends at the plantation's
cafe, where you'll appreciate every drop of
your sample cup of Don Juan coffee.
2km (1
1
⁄
4
miles) outside Santa Elena
(
&
506/2645-7100;
www.donjuancoffee
tour.com).
(
Juan Santamaria International, San
José (161km/100 miles).
L
$$
Monteverde Lodge
(
&
257-
0766
in San José or 645-5057 in Monte-
verde; www.costaricaexpeditions.com).
$$
Hotel El Establo
(
&
645-5110;
www.
hotelelestablo.com).
