This is a cross-post from our travel blog at www.PatrickandMaryGoRound.com:
I spent a few minutes adding some bells to the old GoRound (OK, not that old). You’ll notice that our Contact page has a map of last location and a link to our skype status. Feel free to give us a call on skype if so you’re inclined …
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This is a cross-post from our travel blog at www.PatrickandMaryGoRound.com:
A lot of recommendations of things to do, places to stay, travel tips and sites to see have been rolling in from all over — even from some unexpected places! These have been great and a good recommendation goes a long way with helping to set-up our plans. Also, we had some great safety tips for traveling in Ecuador. …
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This is a cross-post from our travel blog at www.PatrickandMaryGoRound.com:
Mary and I have a working idea of our itinerary for the big trip. Here’s the order of countries, length of stay and approximate dates that we’re considering …
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Mary and I are prepping for our trip, which we plan to share with family and friends. An easy way to share stories and photos will be to blog from the road and post pictures online. Over the weekend, we registered a URL to make both of those possible:
Introducing PatrickandMaryGoRound.com*
* This is a Phoebe Lee production
Right now, we are working out all the aspects of style and getting the pages organized… stay tuned for more updates!
The cat is definitely out of the bag: Mary and I are planning a huge trip (not quite round the world, but nearly there). Planned destinations are South America and Asia for (estimate) 4 months, each. We’ve been saving our pennies and laying the ground work for a long time now. Fortunately, the stars have come together and it’s time to pull the plug on our normal lives for exploration.
We received our Lonely Planet books last night and were excited to crack them open. We’re trying to NOT stay up all night reading about our impending adventures. After checking them out at the bookstore, we ordered the India (Country Guide) and South America (Shoestring). We have also ordered the Southeast Asia: On a Shoestring book, which should arrive sometime this week.
While on vacation in Panama, we visited the mountain town of Boquette which is located an hour northwest of David. On our first day, we rode out to some hot springs with two couples — one from the Netherlands and one from Canada. After a soak and some rays, we all grabbed dinner in a restaurant with local comida. One day 2 in Boquette, we grabbed a quick bagel and joined up with a group for a tour of the Cafe Ruiz coffee plantation and processing facility. Our host, Carlos, started us from the ground up and showed us their organic plants and reception point. Their is a species of coffee -Geisha or Guessa - that Cafe Ruiz had invested in heavily and was working on bringing a whole crop into harvest in 4-6 years.
Carlos explained the growing process and how Cafe Ruiz grows and processes coffee to be shipped all over the world. Carlos had come to the coffee farm with his brother when he was 10 and his mother had been picking coffee since she was only 16. Ruiz employs indigenous people to pick coffee for salary, health care, schools for children, housing and food. The picking season lasts from about November through March, but processing goes on almost year round. Picking is done with utmost care, by hand, to guarantee peak ripeness and the whole process maximizes the eventual profits for all involved. The plantation is naturally shady from the different kinds of plants that grow among the coffee
After the beans are picked and gathered, they are offloaded into the processing facility where Ruiz buys the beans from the farmers based on how many ‘floaters’ appear in a water test. Prices have quadrupled over the last ten years or so due to, in part, skyrocketing demand for beans. The berries fall through a trap door and enter a washing facility. The washing facility also presorts lesser ‘floater’ beans that will be sold as pre-ground or freeze dried coffee. After washing, they are sorted and pealed to remove the outer (red) skin from around the bean. The pealing machine also pulls out the under-ripened beans, which are discarded and used for composting and fertilizing the fields. From there, the beans are fermented for 24 hours which occurs in a slightly stinky set of 8 vats about the size of a large truck, each. After fermentation, beans are pre-dried, which allows the processing to delay for 4 to 6 weeks.
After pre-drying, beans are bagged and stored in a bodega (warehouse) awaiting the change to be fully dried and sold. When dryers open up, the beans are shelled and tumble dried to prepare them for eventual roasting. The parchment or outter (paper-like) shell is burned to provide the heat that dries the beans. Ash removed from the driers is mixed with compost and chicken dung to be spread back onto the fields as fertilizer. After drying, beans are sorted by size, weight, shape and density to provide equality in roasting and ensure that beans will not burn up. The sorted beans are bagged and ready for export, except for a few tons which stay in country and are roasted in the Cafe Ruiz facility just north of town. We continued the tour in the roasting and packaging facility where Carlos discussing roasts, flavoring, grinding, storage and brewing.
These two know their coffee facts!
I have paired down the hundreds of pictures that came from our trip to Costa Rica and Panama to a bold 256 included in my set: Costa Rica Trip 2008. There were lots of pictures taken from the vantage point of an airplane window (and also inside the planes).
Some of the highlights from out trip include:
Videos from our trip to Costa Rica and Panama are now online (thanks to the good vibes from Google Video). You can search for videos from the search bar using the video: tag in the search bar at the top of every page.
For example, to see one of the fifteen videos shot near or in planes, enter video:plane and click Search.
Also, there are sixteen videos from our tour of the Cafe Ruiz coffee plantation (search for video:Ruiz) in Boquette, Panama, which show almost every step in the most excellent process of bringing coffee from the ground into your daily cup.
For all videos, just search for video: and it will display the 20 or so most recent. You can also check out the search capabilities of Google Video’s page, too.
A little teaser of the vids is this one below that I took while we were in a hot spring with some fellow road warriors. We were all having a great time when a snake decided to pop out and see what all the fun was about… we think he was poisonous, but also a baby — enjoy.
We have made it into Mal Pais, Costa Rica and are enjoying the drier weather. We have been walking on the beach and lying in the hammocks. Initially, we had tried to reserve a room south of the crossroads in Mal Pais proper, but wound up in Cabinas Calocita in Santa Theresa. Our place is just up the street from the grocery and beach entrance and it very tranquilo. There was just a bit of rain last night and into this morning, but the sun has popped out and the weather is nice.
On my way to the Internet Cafe at Franks Place, I walked along the beach and passed four sets of group surf lessons. The surf is awesome here and the white sandy beaches go way out into the shallow sandy bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The waves vary throughout the day between experts only and gentle beginner waves. I think that this place is a haven for surfers and beach bums because of its long waves… they are not over powering, but rather ride WAY in from far out giving a long lasting ride.
Santa Theresa seems to be very international (both tourists and business owners) and the place we are staying seems to be full of friends of the German owner. It is time to get back to the beach… Pura Vida.
Our time in Bocas is winding down. We have had some short lived, but heavy rains in the last 2 days… but they did not ruin our time in paradise. We stayed 2 nights at las Olas, the last had an incident with a low battery in our smoke alarm. Olas had a distinctly family atmosphere and we left the kiddies to head closer into town. We moved to Hostal de Hansi just one block south of Parque Central and are in love with the accommodations. It’s run by a friendly German woman and is impeccably clean. We have an awesome room with a balcony for $22/night. On Sunday, we took a water taxi to Bastimentos and checked out Wizard Beach. After walking the length of the beach, we headed to roots where a Panamanian family was singing and dancing into happy hour. We boated back and had dinner at Claudio’s for the house pizza. Afterwards, we checked out Mondo Taitu, which was steeping with some chilled out travelers. After a bar clearing fight right outside, we decided that Mondo Taitu was a nice place to visit.
On Monday, we slept off the rain and moved from Olas to Hansi. After the rain, we took a boat over to Red Frog Beach to relax and check out the (mildly) poisonous red frogs. This is one of the few beaches where swimming is safe and we took advantage of the ocean. We also chilled with an awesome Chilean couple - Ben and Nicole - and shared the boat and a bottle of flor de caña. We showered and ate at el Pecado, arguably Bocas best restaurant. We tried to meet up at the sunken ship bar with our new friends, but figured that the rain kept them away.
This morning, we packed some sandwiches from Panaderìa Aleman and hit up an all day snorkeling tour. We saw dolphins at Bahìa Delfines and snorkled at Cayo Crawl which abounded with coral and iridescent fish. While we were walking on the beach at Cayos Zapatillas, my camera must have fallen into the ocean. I’m less upset about the hardware than I wish I had a copy of my pictures and videos. But, as per her plan, Mary has an excellent log of our trip thus far on her camera, too. We ate a picnic lunch and took a siesta in the hammocks before boating into Hospital Point for another snorkel expedition with our Spanish boatmates. Afterwards, we did laundry, packed and ate dinner at an awesome local restaurant — el Chitrè. Before hitting the internet cafè, I picked up one last souvenir — a hammock that proudly displays its origins.
Tomorrow, we fly out of Bocas headed into David, Panama and will bus up to Boquette.
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