Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste to Monteverde

Well all good things must come to an end, and it is time for me to leave Playa Hermosa and the Peninsula Nicoya for Monteverde. I took the Gray Line shuttle to Monteverde and left at around 8am. It is approximately 150km southeast...in land and at a much higher elevation....so much cooler as well. Although it does not sound that far away, I did not arrive in Monteverde until 1pm!!!! The shuttle drove about half way and we stopped for 30 minutes at a restaurant area to stretch our legs and grab a snack. While I was sitting waiting to move my things to another shuttle, a Scarlet Macaw flew right by me....my God they are beautiful. I have never really seen them fly before...they are huge...and noisy. It turns out that there were about 15 of them flying around. I sat for about 15 minutes just watching them groom one another, bicker and fly from tree to tree. Apparently they mate for life...some of them must have been having some marital squabbles by the sounds of it!!!! Once I changed shuttles I was the only passenger on board...usually these shuttles are full with about 12 people on board, so this was kind of nice. Unfortunately, the not so nice part was veering off the paved highway onto another dusty and bumpy Costa Rican road...you have got to love Costa Rican roads!!! The next two hours were spent banging around, trying not to hit my head on the window when we hit one of the massive pot holes in the road or when we tried to swerve to miss one...I will not be complaining about the roads a home for a long time after this!!! Along the way my driver stopped at a little house to pick up some organic mangoes. They were simply sitting in a little hanging basket at the gate...he told me they were very cheap at only 100 colones each...that is about 25 cents!!!! I can see why he stops here all the time. I arrived at my hostel Cabinas Vista al Golfo at about 1 pm....tired and hungry. Since I arrived early in the day, I decided to see if I could do a coffee tour in the afternoon. After checking out a couple tours at my hostel, I decided to do the Don Juan Coffee Tour. I know it sounds a bit cliche, but I was assured it was an authentic local coffee farm...and that it was. When we arrived, Don Juan himself came out and shook each of our hands...he is in his 70's and such a friendly man. Our tour guide was excellent...he had grown up on his grandfather's coffee farm and picked berries from the age of 5. He has also been drinking coffee since that age as well...9 cups a day now!!! I had no idea there was so much involved in making coffee...I am surprised it is not more expensive. There used to be three kinds of trees that Costa Ricans used to make coffee....two that produced twice as much berries as the third. They would combine the fast and slower growing coffee beans to create blends and produce much more coffee this way. In the mid 90's the new government changed the laws on this and all coffee in Costa Rica now must come from the Arabic coffee been and must be 100%...no blends. This is one reason why Costa Rican coffee is such good quality...so now instead of quantity, they are focused on quality. There are several stages that must take place before the coffee bean is actually roasted and ready to sell. The berries must be picked...all berries are hand picked in Costa Rica...mostly by people from Nicaragua. Inside the berry are two beans. The beans are taken out of the berry and they are covered in a sugary coating...this coating is taken off by soaking the bean for about 30 minutes. The good beans are separated from the lower quality beans and then they must be dried...this is done on huge patios and takes several days...the beans must be turned every 5 hours and must not get wet again or they will be no good. Sometimes they are put into green houses to avoid having them get wet...it rains here a lot. Once they are dried, there is another layer of the beans that must be removed...the husk. When the husk comes off it is used to make coffee paper...recycle is the name of the game here. At this point the coffee beans are ready to be roasted....it does not even smell like coffee until this point. They put the beans in a roaster and the longer they are roasted the darker they get....espresso beans would be the darkest. The longer roasted ones have a stronger taste, but they have less caffeine...I had no idea!!!! Our guide for instance drinks dark roast because he drinks so much coffee. Once we finished our tour we were taken back to where we started and given an opportunity to taste test some of the different roasts. It was really good actually...I hope I am able to sleep tonight though! Costa Rica's economy was built on the coffee bean and I found this history to be really fascinating to learn...I did not learn any of this in school!!! Once I got back to Santa Elena...this is the town I am staying in...I did a little shopping and headed back to my hostel for a little dinner. Off tomorrow to check out the cloud forest and do some zip lining....stay tuned!!! Until then....