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Published: March 28th 2011
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Breakfast.
So artistic! Points for presentation for sure! This morning we spent some quality time in a cute coffee shop down the street from our hotel. They make a really perfect cup of coffee. And we utilized their wifi to work on blogs.
We then spent the morning walking around looking for a tourist office or tour office because we wanted to visit a coffee farm (finca). As usual directions from locals are a bit challenging. Take a right at the pink house, go straight, you'll see it, etc. The other main issue is that signage is not a huge concern for many businesses in C.A. Oh well, we saw the town, walked a bit & finally found the tour office. The guy there gave us good advice on a self-guided tour of one of the bigger fincas nearby. Lots & lots of coffee grows around here. It's not coffee processing time, we just missed that, so we can't really see the process in action. Can't have it all...
We walked through town, through one of the parks where there was a big fair with lots of info about agriculture in the local area & meat BBQing by street vendors & a guy singing on a stage.
He was pretty good.
It is sooooo hot here! I swear the temperature has increased at least 10-15 degrees since we crossed the border. I have no idea how hot it is but from sunrise to sunset you just sweat. On our walk towards the bus terminal we stopped in at an ice cream parlor called Eskimo. There were a ton of locals eating in there, always a good sign, & it smelled good. I got a melon juice (licuado) & Geoff got a Lime juice. Mmmmm. He had a burger & I had a chicken sandwich. Good stuff. Now that we are full & happy we could head to the finca.
We caught our bus & headed up into the hills. This bus had a 42 inch tv mounted to the front of the bus & as soon as we took off they started a movie. It was some John Travolta movie in Spanish. It was awesome! We almost didn't want to get off the bus, it was so fun watching the movie. Why don't they all have tvs? Sadly, we arrived at our stop & thankfully the bus assistant rememebered to tell us where to get
Recycling?
Haven't seen that since home. off, since I'd asked him to do so, otherwise we may never have noticed since we were too engrossed in the movie. It's amazing how quickly tv sucks you in when you don't watch it ever. It's absolutely mesmerizing.
We got off the bus & walked about half a mile into the Selva Negra Finca which is an organic farm. It's a pretty place with some simple hiking trails in the hills behind their hotel/farm. There was coffee growing all around us on our walk in. We hiked around in the hills & heard the howler monkeys howling. We never saw them but we certainly heard them.
After checking out the grounds we went to the restaurant where we got a free snack & cup of coffee with our entrance fee. We weren't hungry but we had to get our free gift! The coffee was really tasty & all of their food products are from animlas raised on their farm & everything is homemade. So, it was good & we were doubly full by the time we left. Sadly, a big rain cloud had settled over the finca & we had to walk out to the highway to
catch our bus. At least it didn't rain too hard on us. We caught our bus on the side of the road with everyone else (except for a few people waiting 10 feet away from us, so the bus had to stop twice, so weird) & headed back to our hotel.
We spent the evening looking through all the hundreds of pictures we've taken the past few weeks & narrowing them down. Snap happy with the camera, that is for sure! We shared a bottle of wine & sat in the hotel for the entire evening. No need for food since we had two full lunches. Piggies. I chatted with Luis for a bit. It started torrential downpouring rain which is always fun when the hostel has a big open courtyard in the middle. The sound of rain is actually really nice. And cooling. It's so hot!
Off to sleep.
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