I’m standing in the Costa Rican countryside and a wild snake has just devoured a frog before my eyes. Admittedly, it wasn’t a very big snake – more like a common green garden snake than an anaconda. And the frog was of the tiny tropical variety.
But still, it’s the most exciting and intrepid thing I’ve seen so far during my brief stay in San Isidro del General, a lush valley three hours southeast of the capital San Jose. Just call me Indiana Jones. Indy would be in his element here – this part of Costa Rica is teeming with mystery and wildlife. Sloths, primates, jaguars, lizards, butterflies and a host of other insects, reptiles and birds are crammed into 50,000 square kilometres of dense, dark jungle.
Driving over the Cerro de la ouerte (oountain of Death) to reach the city of San Isidro, I am treated to stunning vistas of rainforest, exotic flowers and trees, brightly coloured houses and the ordered chaos of countless coffee farms. In Costa Rica, coffee is not just a beverage, it’s a way of life. Every man, woman and child starts the day with a cup of black coffee, made by pouring hot water straight through a cloth bag of freshly ground coffee beans. The result is a sweet, refreshing brew quite unlike the thick, Italian-style coffee that we’re accustomed to in New Zealand.
In San Isidro, I meet the fine men and women of CoopeAgri, Costa Rica’s largest coffee cooperative. This group of local farmers got together almost 50 years ago to sell their coffee to the world, cutting out the big corporations that have made millions from exploiting vulnerable workers in Latin America.
Nowadays, around 19,000 local farmers – 30% of them women – are members of the co-op, which sells its coffee all over the world and plows the profits straight back into the San Isidro community. Schools, hospitals, struggling families and the farmers themselves all reap the benefits of working together to grow, harvest, process and sell the coffee their community produces. All this is because the co-op has worked hard to ensure their coffee is Fairtrade-certified.
As ordinary Kiwis like you and me become increasingly interested in finding out where our food comes from and who’s made it, we’re taking more notice of these kinds of endorsements. Fairtrade works with communities all over the world to ensure they get a fair price for their goods, thereby improving the lives of their families.
It helps farmers like Ramón Arguedas William Araya, on whose farm I have just witnessed the impressive snake-versus-frog showdown. To help us recover from our brush with the local wildlife, our guide takes us for lunch at a roadside café in the San Isidro hills. Surrounded by rainforest and keenly observed by curious locals zooming past on mopeds, we tuck into a meal of chicken, salad, spicy pickle, fried plantains (small bananas) and the tasty combination of rice and red kidney beans that Costa Ricans eat with almost every meal.
A little later, we get the chance to see how coffee is tested and judge if it makes the grade. While wine-tasting can be fun for amateurs, it’s always struck me as a rather strange occupation, with all that sniffing and spitting, and it turns out coffee-tasters follow a similar process. After carefully evaluating the aroma and appearance of the beans, they brew the coffee and taste it by dipping a spoon into the brew, then rapidly sucking it into their mouths with an almighty “sppffft!”
I taste four different types of coffee and have great fun trying to determine the tiny differences in look, smell and taste. A staggering three trillion cups of coffee are sold worldwide every day and it’s fascinating to see what goes into bringing this magical brew to our tables.
The tropical jungles, dusty roads and colourful village life in Costa Rica are now firmly imprinted on my mind. In the future, whenever I drink Arabica coffee, I’ll think of all the happy, passionate people I met in South America, raise my cup and make the local toast, “Pure life!”
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