Entry 14 - Farewell

Entry 14 – Our last day in the field

San Marcos de Tarrazú,  24 August 2007, 11:55 pm

Well, this is it.  Today was our last day in the field. It was such a bittersweet day on so many levels.  On one hand, I am absolutely exhausted.  For the past two weeks, I have gotten up every morning at 5:00 am (or earlier if my rooster buddy was making too much noise outside of my room), showering and getting ready early so I could walk around the hotel waking up several of my fellow travelers and friends at 5:30.  It has been so much fun hearing them yell Gracias! or Buenos Dias! from the other side of their door—or in the case of Tara, having her open the door to my different pose everyday, our little schtick that was our fun way to begin our day.

Tara is one of the two participants from Canada.  She lives in Niagara Falls and is going to school pursuing a degree in Human Geography.  While she says she will probably end up getting a job with the Canadian government, what she'd really love to do is something similar to the field reserch that Natalia and Sebastian do with Earthwatch--making a real impact on the lives of real people.  Tara & I have really hit it off - we are so silly together and sometimes say the exact same thing at the exact same time.  She's a sweetheart & I'll miss seeing her every day.

For the past two weeks, every morning at 6:00 we all went out to have breakfast together in the early morning sunlight, with the same two wonderful women preparing our breakfast everyday, and bringing us new and wonderful food.  (One day I asked if they had huevos duros, hard-boiled eggs.  They did not, but every morning from that point on, huevos duros were on the table.)  Everyday, by 6:30 we were all packed up and ready to head out to the field, for a morning of hard work marking fields and researching plants and trees, on steep and slippery hills, in humid temperatures and heavy sunlight, replaced by pouring rain in the early afternoon. 

Mid-morning breaks brought fresh fruit by Jose, Jorge, or Jorgito.  I’ll never forget the taste of Costa Rican pineapple. We had amazing food prepared by Merce for lunch, eaten picnic-style on the sides of farms, tops of mountains, or at the homes of our host farmers.  Afternoons were typically spent at the lab organizing our work, doing data entry, discussing sustainability, or on field trips to coops and nature preserves.  Evenings brought us together for dinner and more conversation, at restaurants, or family-style at the lab.

Throughout every day and every night, we alternated between sweating, huffing and puffing …. to kind gestures to each other and from our hosts … and so so much laughter.  From quiet giggles, to fun teasing, to fits of belly laughter like I’ve only rarely experienced in my life.  We have learned so much, had our minds changed, our hearts touched, and life-long friendships forged.  None of us will go home the same.  None of us will ever drink a cup of coffee the same.  None of us can be the same type of consumer.  It’s been, as I’ve said before, the journey of a lifetime.

Today we visited the farm of Wilbert Gamboa.  We all got out and ready to work, when Sebastian asked us to wait.  He went through the farm and came back up and announced we needed to go to a different part of the farm.  Something to the effect of someone would get their neck broken if we tried.  Glad he changed his mind.

We went to the part of the farm right by Don Wilbert’s house, so we were able to meet his family.  His children were so beautiful and sweet, and could not have been more polite.  Nancy also fell in love with their dog.

He took us for a tour of his property, and then we got to work.  Again, I went in with the group to mark the 20 square meter quadrat.  It’s a wet and messy job, but it has become one of my favorite things to do.

This farm had some huge, old shade trees, so that was going to be a challenging job.  Donna and I worked together tagging the trees, and it was every bit as challenging as I thought it would be.  Also, because of the size of the shade trees, there were tons of bugs, and the ground stayed very slippery.  Partly because of the conditions, and partly because we were all exhausted, today seemed to take forever.  But we weren’t leaving until it was done.

As people started finishing their tasks, they took well deserved breaks.  My patience was wearing thin, but I forged along.  Nancy, Donna, Roy, and I stayed with Sebastian and Natalia, trying to finish everything.  When all 30 coffee plants had been analyzed, and the GPS coordinates recorded, all that was left was the final recording of the coordinates of the analyzed shade trees.  I believe there were 36 shade trees, and they were hard to find (many of the trees were outside the quadrat but their canopies extended several meters over the coffee plants in the quadrat).  I was getting really grouchy by this point, exhausted, eaten alive by bugs, and frustrated that only Donna, Nancy, and I were left in the field (of course, this was just grouchiness—the rest of the team surely thought we were almost finished and that if we had needed them, we would have come and gotten them). 

But I’ll never forget when Natalia called out that she had found the last shade tree.   All of a sudden, my bad mood was replaced with a deep sadness that this was it, the work was done.  Of course, there was a bit of excitement, too, and a sense of satisfaction at a job well done.  I pulled out my camera as Donna asked Nancy if she would sing a song for us, a farewell song.  She did, and I got a beautiful video of her  singing In My Life, the Beatles song that Bette Midler sang in For the Boys.  It was yet another beautiful moment, which I’ll remember forever.  Even the beeping of the GPS machine couldn’t drown out Nancy’s beautiful voice and emotion as she sang for Donna, Natalia, and me.

In the afternoon, we got a very special treat.  Compita, whom we met on our first day’s tour of Coopetarrazú, and who came with us to Los Quetzales National Park and then helped prepare our dinner that night, put on a special “cupping” for us.  Cupping is the process that coffee buyers all over the world perform in order to check coffee quality.  It is done when the first batch of coffee is purchased, and it is done at the time of shipment, to make sure the batch is the same that was purchased, and that no quality was lost in the shipping process.

Basically, the process goes like this: freshly ground coffee from different batches is arranged on a table in a triangle formation.  The ground coffee is in small porcelain bowls.  When it is time for the cupping to begin, boiling water is poured over the coffee.  After a few minutes, a crust forms on the top of the coffee.  Special deep spoons are used to “break” the crust and the cupper takes a deep inhale (when done professionally, there are notebooks to record observations throughout the process).  Compita had purposely given us two good-quality coffees (one roasted darker than the other so we could see the difference) and one poor-quality coffee, that would never have been sold, so that we could see the contrast.

After smelling, the crust is taken away, and the next step is to taste the coffee.  Using the spoons, we took a loud slurp of coffee (important to do it this way so that the coffee is aerated and so that it sprays over your entire palate), “chewed” it for a minute and then spit it out into one of the spittoons used for cupping.  (Of course, we were all too happy to spit out the coffee from the bad batch—it really was nasty!)

This was a great learning experience for all of us.  Nancy has done several cuppings, and I have done one before, but for all of us, there were many new insights into this experience.  Compita is so serious about what he does—he’s only 23 years old and has been doing this at Coopetarrazú for 5 years.  He also has to be very knowledgeable about the entire processing and roasting processes because they impact what happens when he is doing the cupping.

We went back to the lab to prepare for our evening farewell gathering.  Gabriel and I have spent the last two days furiously preparing for a movie we made of pictures and videos of our trip together, so we were excited to present it.

Sebastian grabbed me and we went outside together to look at a spectacular lightning storm that was coming from the coastal area, roughly where I’ll be heading tomorrow.  I got some nice pictures of it, but mostly just stood and took in the beauty of the show.

Natalia and Sebastian had arranged for all the farmers and their families to come to dinner tonight.  It was so great seeing everyone.  We ate together, and a few people said some words of gratitude and lessons learned.  Nancy cried when she thanked everyone for their hospitality. I didn’t dare say anything because I knew I’d do the same.  But Gabriel and I got to show our movie, which I hope said more than my words could have.  Despite some VERY frustrating technical difficulties, we were finally able to show it.  There was lots of laughter throughout and some tears at the end.

Afterward, we headed back to the hotel.  Sebastian joined several of us in the small hotel bar for a couple beers, while we reminisced about our time together.  I showed several of the videos I’ve taken, and also showed Gabriel’s and my movie again.  When we left to say goodnight, I think we all felt the same.  We were sad that tomorrow is our last time to see each other—at least on this trip.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll all get up and have our breakfast together for the last time.  Then everyone is heading to San Jose.  I’m taking a taxi south, to Quepos and Manuel Antonio, where I have booked an oceanside hotel to relax for two days before heading back to San Francisco.

 Thanks to everyone for the trip of my life.  Farewell.  And Pura Vida!

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