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From Cusco, I directly went to the North of Peru, where I had found a volunteering opportunity to work in a coffee plantation. I was thinking of stopping halfway to visit another place in Peru, but as the trek to Machu Picchu took me longer than expected, I took 2 different buses to arrive in Jaen. Peru is a big country, so it took me 44 hours in total to arrive at the coffee plantation.
The first bus ride was quite an experience as I got to sit in the front next to the bus driver (there wasn’t any other seats available…). So, I could see how bus system in Peru (or at least this bus company) is like a big mafia: we were often stopping to take other passengers without proper tickets, who were paying them directly as I did (“in the pocket” way). The ride wasn’t confortable at all as the driver let his window open the whole night (to stay awake) and it was very curvy, so I could get a good position to sleep. In the morning, I woke up seeing that I was definitely not the only one, who could get a ride in front!
We were 6 people there…
The ride from Cusco to Lima was quite diversified: we were in the mountains, then along canyons, then mountains again, and then from Nazca along the Coast it was looking very dry.
In the afternoon, as there were now seats at the back, the driver told me that I could go there for the last 5 hours. Well, people there weren’t happy about it and made it clear to me! They said “what?! She didn’t pay and she is getting a good seat, she can’t even speak Spanish, and blablabla”. I just replied that I could speak Spanish. At the end, that person was friendlier and asked me how much I paid for this special seat at the front, I replied honestly –it wasn’t that cheap, for such a bad seat-, so she was satisfied I think.
Then 2 guys from the bus, to whom I asked how to get to the next bus terminal in Lima shared a taxi with me and helped me to get a bus for a good price. Such nice people! This 15-minute taxi drive across the capital would be the only time I spent there. But
it seems not the most beautiful city of the country, so I didn’t regret going on. I then got on for another 20 hours in a bus to Jaen in the North of Peru. In the bus, we got as usual the people trying to sell us their “very good products to help us live longer”…
The bus stopped in Jaen, from where I took a shared taxi to go to the plantation. Jaen is definitely not a touristic city and people were not used to see foreigners here. It was the opposite to Puno and Cusco, where they all went to offer you a touristic deal, there they were either kind of defiant or were calling me “gringo”. Depending on how this word is said, it can be mean or just it’s to show that you aren’t a native Spanish-speaker. I personally don’t fancy this word so much, as it’s pejorative and very generalist according to me.
In the evening, 2 days after leaving Cusco, I finally arrived at the coffee plantation called La Manga, close to the small village La Coipa. I was surprised to be welcome by 3 guys from the UK –who couldn’t speak
Spanish very well, so spoke English all the time- and even more surprised to learn that the woman, who I would be working for hadn’t been there for some weeks… I would in fact never meet her during my stay at her place, which was quite weird for me for my 1
st experience using “Workaway” to volunteer.
Anyway, even though, I didn’t know what to expect after my first evening at the place, I had a great experience volunteering. I loved getting to know the process of coffee production:
o Picking up fruits on the steep mountainous fields (each day 3 hours in the morning and 3 others in the afternoon for the local, 3 hours in the morning for the volunteers when it wasn’t raining)
o Putting the fruits every other day in the machine at 5am (in order not to cut the electricity of all the houses around)) to separate the beans from the fruits
o Putting the beans on a big plastic cover to let them dry
o Move the beans every hour to change their sides while drying
o Packed the beans again in the bags every evening and put
them back to dry every morning for 2-3 days (depending of the amount of sun during those days)
o Put the dried beans in another machine to press them
o Sell them to the next town Jaen or for exportation
I participated in all the process from picking to drying, I just haven’t done the last part. Now, I know why I see coffee beans drying in the streets in Peru or Ecuador and I am proud of that! And I know how to get coffee and how looks like coffee before being inside the supermarket pack! It’s my way of learning new things. A new kind of education but directly on the field. I love this new way!
While working, picking up the fruits in the field, I thought whether it was good for the local economy to get volunteers working for a local firm. But I got to the conclusion that yes, it’s a good thing: volunteers are slower to pick up fruits than local people, so we are not taking their jobs, we are just a help to them to get a bit more coffee at the end of the day. Yes, I
am not ashamed of writing it, local guys could pick up 2 portions of coffee fruits in 3 hours, when I could only get ¾ of a portion…
The only thing, which disappointed me during my time at the plantation was that the owner wasn’t there. As I said, I never saw her in a week. I just saw a poster of her, as she is apparently running for the local election here –without being in the area for weeks, politics is strange sometimes…-. So, we were supposed to take care of the dogs, to live in her house alone, to buy at the shop as we didn’t have enough food in the house and as we are not supposed to pay for food, we had to explain there, that they had to “put it on her account”… It’s a shame I think, not to meet the person you are working for, especially as my goal working there was to live with local people… Well, I lived with English and German guys instead…
I was however happy as it was nice to meet the 2
nd chef there, who was talkative and to meet her brother, who showed me
the end of the process and another worker, with whom I had fun talking to on the last morning working on the machine. So, in the end, I got the opportunity to meet local peole another way 😉
Living at the plantation was quite an experience for me on another point as well: we were in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. We were just lucky that there was a shop with some food close by, but there wasn’t any vegetables or meat there. So, when we wanted to eat more diversely, we had to walk or take a moto-taxi to get to the village 4 km away. I went there once and I got lucky that while greeting some local people working in the field on my way there, the boss –who was in fact my boss’s nephew- gave me a ride on his moto to the village 😉
The other experience was to live with a German guy, who was vegan before –not possible in the country were fried chicken is eaten at every meal!-, so he was cooking a lot of different vegetables! I learnt how to cook Yucca, Plantana and how it is
in fact possible to cook without meat very diverse meals! I also learnt how to make bread by myself! I love this: being able to cook as much as possible using local products and not buying prepared food!
So, my 1
st experience volunteering like that was a real success for me and that’s why I am now doing it in every country I am visiting!
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eileen
non-member comment
how to get in touch with this farm
i would love to go and volunteer on this farm. could you help me get in touch with the owners please. thanks