Colombian Coffee - A National Obsession

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The wrong turn I made didn't end up taking taking me too far off the main route, so I was able to make it to Manizales by mid afternoon... in the rain. I have become far too accustomed to rain on this trip so far, which sucks cause this is supposed to be the dry season. According to a guide I had at one point, this year is El nino (or la nina... one of those damn kids) which had completely screwed with the weather. It normally doesn't rain in this part of the country until September!




The guidebooks all said Manizales was a rather unattractive town, but I found it to be rather cool. The entire city is built over several ridges, which means there is hardly a flat road in the city. I would hate to drive here with snow (fortunately they never get any). Both of these pictures were taken from the central ridge through the city.

Anyway, Manizales is a launch point for two main things: coffee and some rather impressive mountains nearby. As it was raining again the following day, I decided to leave the mountains for when I come back through (in a couple weeks... More later), and explore the coffee plantations nearby. I set off to the small town of Chinchina to take a plantation tour.


Welcome to coffee country.




My guide.


One of the plantation workers. This guy really likes being in tourist pictures. He apparently always chooses bushes near the path taken by the tour, just so he can be in the pictures.


The main processing facility. Here is where the beans are stripped of their shells, slimy stuff, sorted, dried, etc. The beans are then sent off to other locations for roasting.

Coffee is Colombia's biggest export (after Cocaine), so the industry is very well developed. Coffee experts can apparently tell the difference between coffee grown at slightly different locations, at slightly different elevations, humidities etc. I could hardly tell, but the tour guide I had (who spoke English!) showed me beans taken from different parts of the plantation. They looked completely different from one another, and this was from a difference in elevation of like a few hundred feet! The best coffee was supposedly from the slopes of the surrounding hills as the conditions are more perfect there or something. It tasted about the same to me, so personally think it is more of a novelty thing than anything else as these beans are harder to harvest than others (and thus more expensive). More power to them though.



I knew almost nothing about the production of coffee previously, so the tour was well worth it (even in the rain). I have never been much of a coffee drinker, but it really is quite good here! And dirt cheap.

I stayed at the plantation for a while after the tour to eat lunch (one of the best meals I've had, with a real salad! A rarity) and watch one of the final world cup games with some other foreigners who were staying in the farmhouse. The game (I think it was Uruguay vs Netherlands) was progressing in the usual soccer fashion at 1v1 for a good 45 minutes, when suddenly the power cup out! The power was out literally for about 10 minutes, but when it came back on, the 1-1 game we were watching had suddenly become 3-1! What??! One of the more important 10 minutes of the entire tournament and I missed because of rain! Damn. I wasn't nearly as bummed as the guy from Uruguay who was watching with us though...

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