(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Saturday Morning Garden Blog Vol 19.7 Part 2: Costa Rica Coffee, Cacao, Sugar Cane, Orchids, Beaches [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-18 Overall, one could aptly describe the four hour drive as a roller coaster, a shake/rattle/roll amusement park ride or a death trap, depending on which seat of the car you’re in. The major portion of the road is paved, two lanes. The highway twists and turns around, up and down steep hills and valleys. As a passenger in a car, watching mountain scenery is usually wonderful. However, constantly watching sheer drop-offs on one side and towering hills fly by on the other side is a bit dizzying. The last two hours of the trek were uncomfortable and sometimes alarming. Very narrow 1-½ lane gravel roads. I’m being generous with that width description; mountainous goat-hoof kind of climb. Our driver shifted gears again and again to get up and down each set of very steep hills — and avoid potholes. The road had big and numerous ‘swallow-a-small-car’ potholes! Should you take this ride, be sure to sit in the front seat! * * * * * * Santa Elena is a delightful bustling village perched on the side of yet another steep hill. Our airbnb accommodations were excellent and lived up to the area’s reputation for cleanliness, efficiency, respect for nature, recycling etc. Only cold water for dish washing. Our deluxe airbnb accommodations had hot water for a shower if you were very stingy with it. The more pressure applied to the line, the colder the water. A most convincing way to learn how not to dawdle in the shower. The days were sunny and quite hot until the sun dipped down below the mountain peaks. Then the wind started howling and the temperature dropped and brought the ‘feels like’ temp far lower than actual temperature. We slept with wool blankets on the beds. Nature and the trade winds meet at the mountain top — the continental divide. Is it always windy in Monteverde Costa Rica? Monteverde has a very intense windy season that starts around November and usually ends sometime in March. The strongest winds are in December and January, often accompanied by swirling mists and the coolest temperatures of the year. Santa Elena sunset with clouds; the famed cloud forest is under those clouds. Santa Elena sunset * * * * * * Santa Elena is only a few miles from Monte Verde where the famous cloud forest, hiking, the “skywalk,” the hanging bridges, zip-lining and other activities are directed at younger, more spry visitors than us. We hired a young man to be our driver. He taxied us to the tour site origins and waited for us. Best money ever spent on vacation. Altitude of around 4600 feet resulted in my having a few breathless spells, especially when hiking up/down hills looking at rows of coffee and cacao trees and sugar cane. This is a white-nosed coatimundi. More here My goal was four-fold and probably quite boring to anyone except gardening geeks like me. 1. Learn how cacao plants (trees) are grown and pollinated, how the beans are sorted/washed/roasted and processed to become either cocoa powder or chocolate (dark, milk or white). The cacao tree Cacao tree flower pollinator: Forcipomyia an incredibly small fly. Another pollinator is the ‘mosquito’. Ceratopogonidae is a family of flies commonly known as no-see-ums, or biting midges, generally 1–3 millimetres in length. The family includes more than 5,000 species, distributed worldwide, apart from the Antarctic and the Arctic. Wikipedia The white pulp around the seed is removed. Seeds are sorted, washed and sun dried. Shelling the beans; once washed, they are sun dried. Grinding beans produces cocoa powder and cocoa butter (what we know it as chocolate); cocoa is the powder that remains after squeezing out all the cocoa butter 2. How those same processes were adapted and applied to the world-famous Costa Rica coffee beans grown at high altitude. Deeper green leafed plant is coffee plant/tree Amaryllis. Surprised to see amaryllis growing/blooming among the coffee trees. St. Joseph lily (amaryllis) growing with coffee trees. A new bulb start is behind the front plant. Arabica coffee trees — what I saw — have a useful life of around 15-20 years. Older plants cannot hold the weight of the beans. All coffee beans are picked by hand — it’s one of the reasons really good coffee is expensive. The coffee berries are bright red when ripe; yellow/orange when not quite ripe. Machines can’t identify ripe beans. Coffee beans follow the same general processing as cacao as far as harvesting, washing. Roasting is done in ovens and carefully timed. The chart above shows roasting times to achieve light to dark roast. The demonstration area smelled like heaven! * * * * * * 3. How stalks of sugar cane become a sweet liquid (cane syrup), the beginnings of brown or refined white table sugar. Oxcart yoke; art everywhere Superb art! The tour guide asked for several helpers and three gentlemen stepped forward. The guide produced a 6-7’ long piece of sugar cane plant. Helpers used what looked like a clothes wringer to squeeze out the juice. The process was repeated 5 more times on the same piece of cane, each time tightening the wringers, until all the juice was captured. Everyone got a small cup of pure cane syrup to drink. It was beyond sweet! Tasted ready to be fermented into rum! Tour guide is man with glasses. The final product in this first stage. Outside the city of San Jose, the highways are lined with massive sugar cane growing fields and processing plants. I made a comment that the feathery flower looked like pampas grass. Sugarcane blooms in late summer or early fall. A feathery flower cluster called a panicle—bearing tiny white or gray flowers on spikelets—sprouts at the top of the canes. Sorry, no picture. For the full description of the processes see here * * * * * * 4. To learn about high altitude orchid growing, specifically how the vanilla orchid (Vanilla planifolia) is grown and pollinated in order to produce vanilla beans that then are used to create vanilla extract. These orchid must be pollinated by hand. The orchids can only be grown in the 10o zone north or south of the equator. Growing zone 10A to 11A. Full information here. Monte Verde Cloud Forest/Santa Elena area of Costa Rica This was an artist rendition (and names) of the various orchids in the hothouse. I have tried to translate the Latin names as best I could. Third row (below) at bottom. If anyone can read the Latin names, please let us know! Lepanthes monteverdensis Brassia arocuig??era Camaridium bradeorum Maxillaria costaricencis Crystocentrum stanleyi Cattleya dowiana Dracula erythrochaeto Epidendrum centropetala Guarianthe skinneri Aemeta densa Playstele jungermannioides Macradiniumxxx ramm?? Oneidium altissimum Maxillaria chrysantha Maxillaria costaricencis Miltoniopsis warsce????? This was a very crowded guided tour with about 30 people. The guide opened his presentation with the basic anatomy of an orchid. The guide was at the head of the line during the walk-through of the very cramped orchid house. Unfortunately, the path was only one person wide, so only those people near guide heard the descriptions. There were no identifying signs/tags that I could find. I was tired having already been through the three hour coffee/cacao/sugar cane tour. Glad I brought my walking stick with me on this tour because there was lots of standing. Had to chuckle when the guide called phalaenopsis “the Walmart Orchid.” Costa Rica is one of the world’s largest grower/distributors of tropical plants in the world. The orchids with all the tiny flowers are generally growing at a high altitude area. I learned this when I lived in the Sierra Nevada. Tiny orchids flourished on our property at 6000 ft. Again, I have no idea how to identify the following. Like last week, I would greatly appreciate any help in identifying them. I believe this is Costa Rica’s national flower: the Guaria Morada orchid (Guarianthe skinneri) Unknown; possibly a color variation of Guaria Morada? Unknown #1 Unknown #2 Lady slipper Unknown #3 Unknown#4 And now we’re off to the beach at Quepos and a coastal drive to Golfido. Quepos Playful wild monkey checking out the garbage cans at the beach He is determined... And finally gives up. Another wild monkey approaches the garbage can. The cycle repeats all day long. Quepos, a fishing village/beach town Sunset at Quepos Fishing boat headed out Quepos One very special restaurant was located on the beachfront. Their specialty was — uh — fish! This restaurant had their own fishing crew and boats. We watched, transfixed, with the unloading of fish from the hold. First one out was a large sailfish slung over the shoulder of a small man. He carefully walked it from the dock to the ice storage area (I’m making an assumption there. This may have been a trophy fish since I did not see “marlin” on the menu). Then, one right after the other, came more huge un-identifiable fish for about 30 minutes. Then giant bags of what we all guessed were the small fish. J and I shared a ceviche appetizer (soooooo good) and mahi-mahi for main course. After dinner we strolled along the beachfront, window shopping. Bought nothing. We liked that restaurant so much we went back again. As one of J’s Costa Rican friends said, “You know the fish is fresh and the price is right because the locals eat there.” * * * * * * The next day we were off to Golfido, another beach town and fishing paradise! A very pleasant car trip (by another one of J’s many Tico friends) along the main highway — the Inter-American Highway, the northern section of the Pan American Highway. One of the hundreds of palm groves along the highway. Truckload of palm berries headed to be processed into palm oil. It’s in just about every cosmetic/lotion we use Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp of the fruit of the oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from oil crops in 2014. Wikipedia One medium size iguana Another one And the third to round out a trip through Rio Claro A very big Brahma bull with a nose ring. His harem followed. Banana tree about to flower We arrived at our final destination in late afternoon. Our host (who also picked us up and drove us from Quepos) was busy preparing to smoke salmon on the grill. His fishermen friends had a great day and shared the bounty with friends. That’s just the way Costa Rica is. Pura Vida! After greetings, unpacking and some socializing, we hit the hay. Our host is an excellent chef and his smoked fish was incredibly tasty. He just sort chopped up stuff and threw some seasoning into a big bowl, poured in some oil — maybe wine? water? — and asked us to taste test. It was yummy. One of those ‘wing it’ recipes that can never be duplicated. He cranked up the wood-fired grill and built a make-shift ‘hood’ for the grill. He fussed over the fish most of the day. This is his property. He left the US about 20 years ago. Is now a Costa Rica citizen. He runs a small construction company. His crew was on the property building an enormous dog run for his three rescue dogs. One of the workers lived down the road “a piece” and rode his horse to work every day. Then one day, he showed up with the new baby — horse, that is!!! Our haven for the last 4 days in Costa Rica Our host preparing to smoke 20+ pounds of fresh salmon on the grill A palm tree specimen Our host chopped off a big bunch of bananas from a tree in his ‘yard,’ and tied it to a big palm tree. He brought out an armful of birding books and told us just to sit and watch. We bird-watched for hours. Mama and a 4-day old foal/colt. Scarlet-rumped tanager Blue-grey tanager We spent hours watching the birds pick at the bananas and return to their hiding place, only to be back a few minutes later. I saw a pair of emerald green toucanets. All web photos are copyrighted and I did not take any photos of the birds I saw, dang it. We slept very well once the evening breeze came along to chill down the high 80s temps. Since we were there AND we’re both artists, we got roped into painting a sign for one of his worker’s wife who grows and sells flowers from home. We were presented with a used rather rusty satellite dish as our canvas. Judy had just finished doing a pro bono face painting job in eastern Costa Rica, so she only had water colors and face painting brushes. I only brought water colors and a few brushes meant for sketching. So we resorted to ‘need and mother of invention’ to solve the issue. These were our options for paint brushes! A coconut husk and palm frond. I fashioned something resembling a paint brush (?) with the help of a scissor and blue painters tape. It got used for the floral background. We used a combination of face paints, water color paints, unusual colors of water based house paint. As usual, the request to paint a sign turned into a, “Well, we’d really like lettering and a phone number and her name etc etc etc.” We handled it all including painting on a concave surface! Before deadline! … It was greatly appreciated. There will be very fond and happy memories of this part of our trip. We spent the last two days doing absolutely nothing! Our bird watching location Our host’s avocado tree. The unfinished swimming pool View from the veranda We were rewarded with a marvelous smoked salmon dinner. We had to leave in two days from Golfido to fly to San Juan. Part 1 had the photos from the plane! I definitely need to spend more time in the country and visit the eastern half of the country to determine where I want to live. Lots of reading and decisions to make. The new build next door now has a completed foundation. Thanks for stopping by today! 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