Opinion: Whiffs of coffee business float throughout Costa Rica

I learned this business-of-the-bean attribute while on a missions trip to the Central American country June 13–23.

It was a time spent giving – building stairs and a railing to Sunday School classrooms, erecting a rock wall for church kids, painting murals of Bible stories and sharing Jesus’ love – but looking back, I took away more from the trip than I dished out. It’s funny how that works.

Fueling our group from Park Crest Baptist Church was homegrown java. Coffee plants were everywhere in Costa Rica, and there was always some brewing. Stores even offered it to shoppers for free.

Our group of 21 spent one day as tourists, a segment that this country is certainly prepared to handle. I was surprised at the presence of tourists and the number of tourist-related activities, even in and around the noncoastal capital city of San José, where we primarily stayed.

Keeping with the tourism theme of this issue, I’ll take you on a trip to Costa Rica.

Coffee generations

We spent one day driving through four of the country’s seven provinces en route to walking through the rain forest, climbing an active volcano and observing wildlife on a river.

The first stop on our “highlights” guided tour was a third-generation owned coffee plantation where we consumed the traditional beans-and-rice with fried plantains breakfast and the best cup of joe I’ve ever had. The plantation’s specialty is the peaberry bean, which is said to be unique because the bean is whole, not split like other coffee beans.

The company, Café Tres Generaciones, grows its plants at the Doka Estate, located on the slopes of Poás Volcano, which we hiked up later in the day. The altitude, 4,500 feet above sea level, and the fertile volcanic soil combine for unique growing conditions.

Our guide told us that Costa Rica is the world’s third-largest coffee producer behind Vietnam and Brazil, which generates 35 percent of the coffee we drink. While the coffee business may be lucrative for the growers, picking the beans is extremely hard and tedious work, paying only $11 to $20 each 12-hour work day. Many Nicaraguans cross their southern border to make a living harvesting coffee beans.

This 5,000-acre plantation has a small bed-and-breakfast on site, where we met a Canadian couple who were scouting out property for development opportunities.

The locals say the three best kinds of coffee are, in no particular order, Café 1820, Britt and Café Rey.

Cloud forest

I was introduced to the cloud forest at our next stop, the Poás Volcano. We drove and walked up this active volcano which last erupted in 2006, hoping to get a glimpse of its massive crater. Despite a 30-minute wait, the clouds did not clear enough to see inside the crater that spans two soccer fields and holds the Botos Lagoon. The ideal time, they say, is shortly after 9 a.m.

Still, it was an unforgettable experience being covered in dense clouds and having to wipe condensation from my glasses.

Peaceful rainforest

The most beautiful view on the tour was the La Paz Fall. As the name says, it was very peaceful, and made for some of my favorite photography. I could have spent all day there, wandering the rest of the Waterfall Gardens nature park.

After catching waterfall views, we stopped at a hummingbird garden before heading to lunch in the thick of the rainforest. An afternoon walk exposed two poisonous dart frogs – the green and black and the “blue jeans” species – tree-climbing iguanas and exotic flowers around every turn.

The day wrapped with a cruise down the Sarapiquí River, where we spotted monkeys, bats, a cayman and a variety of birds, including vulchers, herrings and the most beautiful silver beak tanager.

The only disappointment on the tropical river ride was the absence of any sloths – oh, and the fact that the fisherman in our group did not catch a fish.

Costa Rica, a country of more than 4.1 million people in a space the size of West Virginia, has much to offer travelers. One should be prepared to see economic extremes – there is hardly a middle class. The beauty of the country is a stark contrast to the humble living quarters in dirt-road towns.

But smiles are mostly everywhere. Perhaps they’re living out the Costa Rican motto: “pura vida,” which means pure life.

Eric Olson, Springfield Business Journal editor, can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]