Week 2 in Guatemala, Part 1

Part 1You´ve never smelled coffee quite like this before. Pulp and skin from the cherries, used as organic fertilizer, smells ....pretty rich.

Coffee cherries in Paraiso Privado. It´s late in the harvest season here so the trees are a little bare.

Coffee drying in parchment On the ridge of the Sierra Las Minas mountain range, Paraiso Privado.

On Wednesday the 11th, I woke up at 4:30am in order to be ready for the three and a half hour drive on winding, bumpy dirt roads east to the municipality of La Tinta. At just after 5:10 I said farewell to my host, Sal, and climbed into what I would later come to understand is one of the toughest little pick-up trucks out there. I was making the ride with Glenda, assistant manager at the APODIP coffee farmers association in Cobán. As we pulled away from the curb I knew that would be my last chance for nearly three days to hear or be understood in my native language. With Glenda, who knew to speak slowly and clearly, I could communicate surprisingly well, holding a steady conversations the whole trip down. I realized as soon as we turned on the road to La Tinta that there would be no sleeping on this drive. When we arrived I was exhausted from waking so early, but soon felt ridiculous when we met Mario, who walked five hours beginning at 4am to attend the meeting we´d just drived to get to. The next day I would meet Miguel, who walked four hours beginning long before sunrise to attend another meeting. And prejudiced ladinos call indigenous people lazy? guess they haven´t met Americans.

After struggling to stay awake through a meeting held mostly in the native language of Q´eqchí (yes, I know how it´s spelled now), We wound up into the mountains on the most incredible and frightening road I´ve ever had the adventure of experiencing. Narrow, washed out, tucked against cliffsides like the road itself was pressing against the mountainside for fear of falling off, dried mud tracks, deep holes, huge rocks, hairpin switchbacks requiring five point turns reversing toward cliff edges, up and up and up. It´s strange to be so in remote a place and pass by cell towers and soft drink ads. when we finally arrived after an hour and a half of not looking down, we stepped out of the truck (resisting the urge to kneel and kiss the ground) in the community of Paraiso Privado - "Private Paradise."

Here I saw my first coffee plants of the trip, and toured the Beneficio, or processing plant. They had a set-up unlike anything I´ve seen before, with a ten foot tall drum drier that can handle 6,000 lbs of coffee beans in parchment and a dual-hopper, diesel powered depulping machine bigger than the living room of my last apartment. Here 40 indigenous farmers cultivate the mountainsides and process their coffee, hard bean and strictly hard bean qualities (SHB being the top of the top) of the varietals Bourbon, Typica, Catuaí and Maragogype. Four days later I would be surprised by the opportunity to cup these very coffees from this very community. I was pleased to find that the SHB Catuaí/Bourbón blend and the Margogype are both fantastic, scoring in the mid to high 80´s according to my pallete and that of Roméo, the cupper at a Beneficio in Coban and one of the best in the business.

The next day, down in the valley, I attended a day long workshop in four parts. One was on the importance of and methods toward increasing productivity, the second was on the characteristics of different varietals, sub-species and hybrids of Coffea Arabica each with unique growth habits, bean sizes and shapes, tendencies toward microclimates, altitudes and humidity levels, leaf shapes, fruit colors, plant sizes and flavor qualities in the cup. The third part of the day was spent discussing the method for selecting the best cherries for re-seeding and how to process them effectively to produce the healthiest plants possible. Part four was on early cultivation, replanting, soil care, seedling maintenance and nursery-level coffee plant health. I have 12 pages of notes from this day, all in spanish. I was disappointed that the following day, Friday, instead of following the agrarian technician from ANACAFE, Guatemala´s national coffee association, and the many indigenous farmers I´d met at the workshop up into the fields to dig in the dirt and practice what we´d learned via powerpoint on Thursday, Glenda and I along with the president of APODIP left that area, drove another hour and half into the mountains to attend a symbolic meeting of farmers, co-op representatives and NGO´s that, unlike the day before, I didn´t understand a single word of. Having not slept much at all the night before, I spent the first two hours of the meeting lost and exhausted, wishing I was out in the fields, and the last hour and a half asleep in the truck.