Hacienda Venecia coffee farm

My glorious return to Colombia started with a visit to a coffee finca called Hacienda Venecia. We took a tour of the farm and learned about the entire process, from the nursery to the harvest to the roasting. We also learned about different coffee flavors, which depend on the soil, altitude, etc. Coffee in Manizales has chocolate flavors, mmmmmm.... Part of this lesson involved sniffing extracts and studying flavor charts. I'm not sure how they decided that some coffee tastes like beef or rubber, but that must be some kind of specialized expertise.

The tour guide confirmed that the good coffee gets exported and the substandard coffee is made into instant coffee or is consumed by locals. He showed us how to sort the green beans by quality, then we roasted the ones we picked out and tasted them. The first picture is the roaster. We had some yummy espresso and then headed out to the fields to see the plants. The guide explained the planting and harvesting process. The hillsides are so steep in places, it looks like pretty dangerous work.

We also got to visit the actual hacienda, which is a very lovely bamboo house with a giant wrap-around porch. It featured a lovely view of the farm, beautiful orchids and other plants, and large fowl like turkeys and peacocks. We got to eat some starfruit right off the tree! Then we visited the processing center, where the beans are weighed, cleaned, and dried. When we got back to the beginning, we had another cup of coffee and chilled in the hammock until our jeep arrived to take us back into town.

After all of that, I headed into town with Yoly, one of the staff from the hostel, to look for a new suitcase. The one that I brought with me (Jesse's, actually) was destroyed on the flight from Bogota to Manizales. Avianca won't pay for it because it is an external piece that was damaged, even though a giant hole was created when the wheel was ripped off and I could lose all of the contents inside. I bought one that is made of fiberglass, so hopefully this one will survive the rest of the trip!