HONDURAS – The green tropic

In Honduras we saw particularly nice cherries, the most beautiful we ever saw. Red, solid, marvellous. Their ripeness was incredibly uniform. Honduras is a beautiful country and has been a fantastic producer for the last 10 years: it had a great technological development and continues to invest in its coffee market, which is relatively young compared to the other South American countries. In this sector they are less tied to traditions and they are fresher, faster and more modern. They study how to create the best conditions for farming: sun, ground, climate. The yield per hectare is higher. Rainforest Alliance is well settled here.
In Honduras you have to take precautions for your personal safety. The hacienda where we stayed offered us an armed escort, even inside the plantation, where whole families worked.
In this plantation there was a small area surrounded by orange groves: here El Naranjal, a precious coffee cru that is produced for only 60 bags per year, is cultivated. Needless to say, if you want one of these bags you have to reserve it.
The Naranjal farmer is called Arnold Paz, agricultural engineer who studied in the US. He is developing new working methods, different from the common ones, and long processes that include passages in wood cases.
These methods are shared with all the other producers, because Arnold knows that with a larger customer attraction, the whole region will benefit from it, including himself. He also knows that his peculiarity is his terroir. Sharing technical knowledge does not threaten competitiveness.

All the plantations are far from the cities, they are completely immersed into the nature. And in Colombia geography is arduous. This means long bus or jeep trips, or waiting at the pueblos traffic lights, where you may meet some hormigas culonas (a typical local snack) sellers. I have not tried them… for now I still prefer coffee to fried ants!

Coffee flowers are white, they resemble jasmine’s for their intense fragrance. Their blooming is even more enchanting than that of cherry trees. My first trip to India was magnificent. I must admit that being surrounded by the scents of the plantations is the most exciting part of my job.
In India every work step is diligently performed and is also extremely elegant: women, with their colourful dresses, sit on the ground with such a natural posture we do not even know in the western culture, and carefully select the coffee beans, eliminating the broken or imperfect ones. It is a long and hard job that they transform in exquisite lightness.
Coffee farmers are a big family: the production processes can change from continent to continent, details and uses may vary, but the recognizable, palpable passion people have is the same everywhere. Getting to the plantation after a long trip is always a magical and welcoming moment. In India I have been hosted by the farmers that I visited and I have always had dinner with their family.
Bean drying can be eased by short passages in ovens powered by pruning branches from the plantations. This is what I saw in Brazil. In certain areas they perform ground drying in patios or outdoors, while in other areas I saw the so-called “African beds”, or raised meshes on which seeds are dried.
In India, plantations are surrounded by tea, cocoa, pepper and vanilla plants which have their roots in the same soil. Often, in India, indigenous farmers go barefoot into the flora in order to pick the coffee cherries. It is important to remember that among the flora there is the fauna: spiders, snakes, cobras and other nice beasts. I prefer to wear long-sleeved shirts… It is the price to pay for hand-picked coffee.

In Panama City you have to watch out for fake cops. Criminality is common in these areas. In the profession I chose there are some inconveniences, but when I get to the plantations everything changes and I realize it was worth it. Many years after my first trip, seeing coffee plants still excites me. Its fruits resemble cherries for their shape and colour, sometimes they are yellow. The pulp is sugary, the peel is thick.

One of my first plantation trips was in the Dominican Republic: an interesting tour that included a visit of the tobacco plantations. Latin America, besides great coffee types, has surely a very interesting life pace. Hammocks, patios and “bells”. The bell strategy was invented in the Dominican Republic, where during the hottest hours of the day the temperature is boiling, so it is not surprising to find workers resting a while in the shadow. From the haciendas offices the bell rings and workers promptly come back to lay coffee beans.