Coasting for Coffee in Costa Rica By David Weiner-Light My blaring alarm cut through the silence. Sunlight creeps in through the cracks, normally a welcome sight but not at this ghastly hour. My strength is mounting; eventually, I have enough to roll out of bed and into the bathroom. Weary-eyed plodding leads to the kitchen where a reprieve to this hell awaits. The coffee maker. I open the bag, place the filter in the machine, pour the coffee in the filter, turn on the contraption, add some water and wait. Soon enough, liquid energy and warmth storms through my veins, prickling the hair on the back of my neck and allowing me to become a real living person, not an inanimate object. Where did this elixir of the Gods come from? I needed to know, so I followed the beans and found myself in Monteverde, The Cloud Forest of Costa Rica. I took a tour of Don Juan Coffee Plantation where I got an in depth look at how coffee goes from “crop to cup.” What I found was informational, eye-opening, and even a little startling. My friend Brooks had never left the country. He, like myself, wanted to avoid the traditional Spring Break, a la Cancun, so we could truly ingrain ourselves in a culture. While walking through the streets of Alajuela on our first day, I couldn’t help but be seduced by the bittersweet aromas wafting from Don Mayo’s Café. My muddled Spanish got me a cup of coffee and what I believe was a response from Maria that the beans were grown at a small plantation in the south of the country. Maria went on to say that the beans were lightly roasted and some other jargon I had yet to understand. I sipped on the coffee. It was different from anything I had had before. It was hot, smooth, flavorful, bitter, sweet. Delicious. Later in the day, we waited for a panicked hour at the bus stop from Alajuela to Monteverde, which was more of a stretch of highway than a bus stop. We didn’t know where we were or if the bus had left or which direction it would go or if there was a bus at all. We had all but given up when it finally arrived and made the windy trek up to Monteverde. For hours, I awaited the tippy top of the mountain, peering out the window, hoping this turn would be the final one. Eventually, we made it. At the start of the tour, we were told to decide between the Spanish and the English tours. As much as we wanted to pretend we could do the Spanish one, we succumbed to being typical gringos. Our tour guide, Jasdiel Ramirez, had worked at the plantation for a year giving tours and processing the crops. He told us, "I can't eat chocolate, drink coffee, or eat sugar now," grinning ear to ear. The start of our vices tour had begun. 1 Jasdiel demonstrating sugar cane pressing The young kids in our tour and us young adults were shepherded into a colorful ox cart that smelled about as good as one would expect. Our garbage- truckesque ride meandered through slender green plants and a system of spigots and brought us to a small cabin filled with jars and spices: the chocolate station. Jasdiel told us about the cocoa beans, cocoa butter, white chocolate, and some other stuff or whatever but frankly, I wasn’t paying much attention. Sure, chocolate tastes good. Obviously, the sample melted in my mouth and sent me back to Easter egg hunts and Halloween. Irrelevant. I was on a mission. I wanted coffee. Did I just grow up or something? My upbringing was filled with coffee. My dad has cut back to about three cups a day and please don’t even ask if he wants cream or sugar in that. My mom, on the other hand, despised the stuff. Incidentally, I took after my father and woke up every morning to my nose being tickled by the bitter aromas. By seven, I started claiming I loved the smell which was unequivocally a lie. However, there was pressure from an early age to continue my father’s “legacy.” Most mornings, when I was a wee lad, my dad and I would stroll to town and stop at our favorite café so he could stop the withdrawals and I could get a pastry. So, my love of coffee was predestined. Even my third word, after “Momma” and “Dada,” was “Coffee-cup.” Once I reached an appropriate age to drink coffee, I wasn’t allowed to. I was (and still am) quite short, and my parents feared even a drop a caffeine would stunt my already miniscule growth. I would beg and plead and deceive to get coffee, which was too hot and tasted like someone had wrung out an old sock. Once I reached my full adult height or, the height of a normal seventh grader, I started liking the stuff. Once I reached college, I started depending on the stuff. Once I had to decide on a spring break trip, I had to visit The Source: Costa Rica. I found myself giddy and antsy to try some Costa Rican coffee. After waiting about seven hours, Jasdiel finally led us to the magic beans. He told us the legend of the origins of coffee: “An Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi noticed his goats were riled up and acting crazy after eating the red berries from an Arabica tree. He decided to make a tea out of the plant that was the culprit. Disgusted, he spat it out into a fire. The fire roasted it and created the scent we all know and love.” True or not, I spent the next few minutes daydreaming about goats barking (do goats bark..?) and shuffling around in circles, eyes seemingly taped wide open. I zoned back in to Jasdiel describing the layers of the coffee bean. The skin, the mucilage, the parchment, the endosperm, and the embryo. He continued, “The mucilage is very sweet. The civet, kinda like a half monkey-half cat, eats beans that have the mucilage exposed. They poop it out and that is where the most expensive coffee, Kopi Luwak, is from. They clean it first.” I felt Confused, scared, intrigued, excited, and sick. Immediately, I thought back to my past several hundred cups of coffee, hoping and praying that I hadn’t drank, for lack of a better term, liquid poop. Questions and fear flooded my mind and my bowels. Did people know this? Should I alert the media? Why would anyone subject themselves to such an atrocity? I was helpless. Amid my selfish hysteria, I began to picture the poor soul whose job was to “harvest” this “delicacy.” I was beginning to come to grips with it but no, I wasn’t. I wondered aloud “How can I trust another cup again?” I tried to push it out of my mind and continue on. After the internal crisis, Jasdiel led us through the plantation, stopping at different life-cycle stages of plants and machinery. The plantation smelled just perfect. A little coffee, a little cocoa, a little heaven. The paths were lined with 8- foot high bamboo-like plants, which were the coffee plants. The beans are picked by itinerant Nicaraguan farmers who place kilos and kilos in buckets, hoping that a few of them are good enough for coffee use. The coffee takes 3 years to be planted, picked, washed, filtered, dried, aged, and . 2 Drying process in the greenhouse roasted. This whole process is covered along the way, ending with the roaster. Finally, after two hours of listening, we get to the samples. I shook off the poop coffee concept and decided to indulge. Wow. Brooks and I slurped down four cups each in about 10 minutes. We each bought $40 worth of souvenirs. I’ve never been more content, jittery, warm, liquefied, poor, and excited before in my life. The rest of the day, I just wanted to run around. Throughout the rest of the trip, we checked out a lot more coffee shops to pad our addictions. Every place we went to had an incredible selection with high tech gadgets and gizmos to produce the perfect cup. Except one place. In the town of Quepos, I went to get coffee in the afternoon and was astonished to find a void of a $2000 coffee machine. In its stead was a chorreador, a traditional Costa Rican coffee maker. Essentially, it is a stand with a sock. The stand is made of either wood or metal and holds the small piece of cloth a foot above the table. Ground beans are stuffed into the cloth and hot water is poured over them. The residue seeps through the cloth and into the mug. That was the best cup of coffee I had on my trip. My sister had gotten me one for my birthday and I had never given it much thought, as it seemed like an inefficient and unnecessary tool. However, I realized, this is what coffee is in its purest form. No machines, no electricity, no waste, just hot water pour over grounds. This decades-old method is still alive today and is the link back to the beginning of coffee in Costa Rica. Never mind your double mocha Frappuccino or your vanilla soy latte. This is what coffee is supposed to be. Map of Costa Rica with Monteverde highlighted Itinerary: 1.