Volcano and Coffee

March 23, Thursday - We were awake early for an 8 o'clock departure on a bus bound for Poas Volcano and Doka Estates Coffee Plantation.  We drove about 2 hours mostly north climbing from 3,000 feet to 8,000 feet into a “tropical cloud forest.”  The dominant feature of a cloud forest being clouds, after walking the half mile to the crater overlook, what we saw was — clouds.  Our leaders said if we waited 20 minutes, then the clouds might part and we would see a beautiful lake in a steep-sided caldera. We waited in the mists but no such luck.

We then hiked up 300 feet to 8,450 feet through dense, dark woodland (not much more than 15 feet high) on a concrete path resembling a tunnel.  We stopped to visit bromeliads, tree ferns, and paper leaf tree.  The second overlook, which was to provide a view of Batak Lagoon was also fogged in.  But, we did meet a residential, endemic Poas squirrel, which seemed be on hospitality duty.

What is looks like - note the raindrops on the display photo

We walked back down through the forest seeing a couple of birds and large beetle.  We walked in raincoats, hats and carrying umbrellas, looking like proper Oregonians.

Tree fern

Leader Reimer explaining Bromeliads

"Poor man Umbrella"

We re-boarded the bus for a ride down past farmlands (cattle, coffee and commercial flowers) to about 4,000 feet and turned into the Doka Estate Coffee Plantation.  We had a buffet lunch in their dining room, then toured a butterfly enclosure with amazing Owl butterfly, the size of one’s hand.  When landed they closed up showing a brown wings with eye spots; when flying the upper wing surface was bright sky blue.  

I could photograph the butterfly in flight

Then we were given a guided tour of the coffee operations, learning the life cycle of coffee plants, harvesting cycles and the processes that result in coffee for consumption.  Like others, we ended up with a series of coffee tastes and an opportunity to spend money in the gift shop.   Coffee beans are harvested in October through March (the dry season) mostly by Nicaraguans, dumped into a holding tank which is filled with water so that the heavier, high quality beans sink and are siphoned off, separating them from the lower quality beans.  The next step involves passing the beans through a series of grating machines that take off the outer husk and sort by size.  Next the beans are dried, with the best beans laid out in the sun for at least three days.  Other beans are dried in big dryers using the bean residues as fuel.  At this point the beans a put into sacks and age in a warehouse for at least 3 months.  Most of this company’s beans are exported out of the country for roasting.   They keep about 10% for local roasting and sales.  The last two steps involve removing the “parchment” layer of the bean (done at another location) and then roasting.  Light roasting takes 15 minutes at 450 degrees, a medium roast takes 17 minutes and dark roast is 20 minutes.  Surprisingly, longer roasting time increase flavor but decrease the caffeine.

Husk removal machines

  

Coffee beans drying

We rode back to the hotel, stuck in a bottleneck on the PanAmerican Highway for bridge construction, reaching our hotel at 5 pm.  At 6 pm, we attended an hour-long lecture on the natural history of Costa Rica.  We had supper after in the hotel restaurant.