After a long flight from Montreal and a delay in Mexico City, Phil, Fer and the children met up with us at the hotel in Veracruz the next day. Fernanda had booked a tour of a coffee plantation in Coatepec their first day on arrival for her, Phil, Marie and myself and the car picking us up was waiting for us early that morning. Fer's family would look after Amy and William in the hotel while we took off for the mountains. Coatepec is near Xalapa so we found ourselves back on the highway heading west again into the high country! Nobody felt much like going after only a few hours of sleep but our host made us feel very welcome and we were to return that night totally thrilled with the day and thankful we had gone.
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| breakfast at Museo and El Cafe-Tal Apan, Coatepec |
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| Phil and Marie making handmade corn tortillas |
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| Fernando explaining the growing of beans from seeds |
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| grinding coffee beans the old way |
We arrived to a wonderful breakfast served to us and hot, fresh coffee before getting a tour of the museum, learning how beans are grown from seed before heading out in the back of an old pickup truck for a few miles into the hills. We crawled over a bumpy rocky road that was in parts just a trail, heavy brush and jungle all about us. The owner's son Fernando Apan, who acted as our translator, came with us and though he has been blind since birth, had no trouble climbing up into the truck and later negotiating the rough, muddy path through the thick vegetation. We tripped and sprawled a few times in the mud past towering oaks, banana trees and palms among hundreds of coffee bean trees in various stages of development. We found out these beans have to be grown in the shade of other trees to survive the hot sun. We finally came to a small clearing where they had set up a wooden table on which the driver and his assistant laid out four different kinds of coffee, from medium to strong, which we tasted with accompanying chocolate and macadamia nuts. Just beyond the clearing the land fell steeply into a deep gorge cleaved by a waterfall that roared in the distance. All around us cicadas and other insects called and huge spiders draped from the overhanging trees above us. It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie! After a cold beer that had been carried in we had the opportunity to each plant our own coffee bean tree, promising to come back in thirty or forty years to see how it was doing!
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| Fernando, Phil, Fernanda, Marie, Gary in the Coffee Bean Express |
On our return to the El-Cafe-tal we had a typical Mexican feast with a bottle of mescal for lunch, then headed out to visit a local graphic artists studio, La Ceiba Grafica, which was unfortunately closed. Outside the studio was a huge Ceiba tree with a huge branchless trunk culminating in an enormous spreading canopy and buttress roots over two feet high anchoring it to the ground. The only tree I have seen that was bigger around were the giant redwoods in California! Coatapec, sometimes called the Coffee Capital of Mexico, is a small town but we could see it was well maintained and centered round the coffee industry. Afterwards we returned to the museum gift shop and then sat down to a heart lifting piano recital by Fernando, an accomplished and well known artist in the area. A wonderful way to end an unforgettable day!
Una experiencia sublime! gws
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| cemetery, Coatepec |
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| Fernando Apan, pianist, our translator and all around nice guy! |
