The Source of the Addiction - Costa Rica 2005

This is where it all begins - the coffee plantation. These red beans are the source of that cup of joe that many of us crave each day.

While we were in Santa Elena, we took a tour of an organic, shade grown coffee plantation. On the way to the plantation, we saw a sloth (but no monkey). The red husk of the bean itself is pretty sweet, and the bean is white and very hard.


After we saw the plantation, we went to one of the sorting and drying centers in the area. The farmer below is bringing his beans to the center to be sorted and dried.

If there was one thing that really stuck out about the whole process was that it was almost 100% manual labor. Since the beans ripen throughout the season, machines cannot pick the beans like in vineyards. The picking is manual, the transportation is via oxen, the weighing and sorting is rudimentary, and the first phase of the drying requires spreading the beans on a concrete bed - with shovel and wheelbarrow.


Eva is posing here with some of the heros of the process - the oxen. As a sidenote, the ox car is a protected symbol of Costa Rica and celebrates the Costa Rican worker.


On these concrete beds, the beans are first dried. After a few weeks, they go to a mechanical dryer to complete the process. From there, the beans go to the cities where the beans are roasted.