Old friends in new places

I had a visitor last weekend.  An old friend came into town for a few days, and I enjoyed the chance to catch up, show someone around, and put my spare bedroom to good use.

We headed up to Volcan (volcano) Poás early on Saturday and got a good view before the clouds rolled in, and took some pictures for a very friendly older couple that were from Georgia.   The guy later wanted a picture of the two of us against the volcano.  I’m trying hard not to see that as creepy.

Volcan Poás.  It's difficult to realize this by looking at a picture, but it's approximately one mile across.  That's a lot of dirt that got thrown somewhere.

We also did some hiking around the area.  The trail was interesting in part because the elevation changed a lot, and the flora did as well.  The elevation at Poas is ~2700m, which is higher than Denver, but there is still a rainforest around there because of the moisture from the clouds. 

At her prompting we headed to a coffee plantation to take a tour.  It’s the sort of thing I might get around to, but sounds pretty touristy and (as someone who doesn’t drink coffee) wouldn’t be high on my to-do list.  However, it was fascinating.  Even if it didn’t change my coffee-drinking habits.

The short version: it takes a lot of work to make your cup of coffee.  One person can pick ~28 lbs of coffee beans in an hour.  That becomes 4 lbs of coffee beans.  If each pound of coffee is ~8 cups, that means that you get ~32 cups of coffee from one hour of someone hand-picking coffee.  Oh, and did I mention that coffee picking season is during the rainy season?  And that it is grown on mountain slopes?  A worker gets $2-3 per 28 lbs (the standard coffee unit here).  If each 1 lb bag of coffee beans sells for $7 (and I have no idea of the price, but that sounds about right), then that’s $28 in final value.  If each of these turns into a Starbucks cup of coffee, that’s ~$120 in final value.  Just an interesting partial look at the economics of your coffee and how the proceeds are divided.

Pickers at this place (I don’t know about others) get free housing and schooling during the picking season.  Most are from Nicaragua, because the Costa Ricans don’t want the jobs.

PS: want your coffee decaf?  This place ships beans to Hamburg, where they are water-processed to remove caffeine, then shipped back to be processed alongside the regular beans.  That’s a lot of extra work.  The coffee plantation pays only shipping both ways; the German group takes its payment by keeping the extracted caffeine and selling to – you probably guessed it – Coke and energy-drink companies.

The weekend also made me realize something else: if you are a vegetarian, you’d better like rice and beans.  I’ve found it hard to get a lot of vegetables here, but at least I’m not trying to live on them.  My friend is now a gallo pinto connoisseur.