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Published: November 28th 2009
Coffee Plants
Tiny arabica bean plantsThe people are different again from those we came across in Coban. The main square is a key place where the locals ply their crafts and most are being sold by children under 12 it seemed.
We were quickly approached by several people trying to sell stuff and by the time we had the cutest little 10 yr old who spoke excellent English come up to us we knew immediately she was charging way over the top for this cloth. That said in the end I bought it from here after some negotiation - it´s green so I think it has Nicola´s name on it! Mind you it really upset another girl when we would not buy from her and she called me stingy! and that my spanish was bad!! Well I know that but is showed how competitive it was. A couple of days latter the two little monkeys approached up again and I teased the younger of the two about how expensive she was but that I liked her stuff. Both knew by then we were not buying more so they asked me if I would buy them an ice cream instead. It gave me the greatest pleasure
Coffee beans
The beans Neil was allowed to pick to give them both a 5Q note. Worth 50p to me and 5 ice creams for them!
Anyway we chose to do a tour to the local Coffee Plantation owned by the Dalton family. These guys supple 60% of the beans to Starbucks and we saw everything from the little plants to picking our own beans to the packaging. The beans are like little cherries when you pick them and this skin is used in local jam, the liquor inside for Tia Maria and finally the bean for the coffee. From what I could gather in my Spanish Starbucks seem pretty ethical, they commit to buy for a long period of time then as long as the beans are to standard they keep renewing. Mind you the rate for a coffee picker is about 7$ a day so pretty hard going on the local people who do this.
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