Thursday, July 3, 2014
Ali & I woke up and made breakfast and coffee with Aybi. Breakfast was homemade corn tortillas, fried eggs, and cooked red beans blended with onions & peppers. Aybi is a tortilla-making pro. She makes a dough of corn flour and water, rolls a ball, and then slaps it between her hands until it flattens into a disc, which gets cooked on a dry griddle. Delicious! I made a lopsided tortilla…
We got dressed and took a tuk tuk to the Finca Filadelphia coffee plantation, where we took a tour. Our guide first showed us the seedlings. Two varieties are hand-spliced together: Arabicia for the flavor, and Robusto for the strong roots. The women who do the grafting will splice 1,000 plants a day! Ali was able to do one herself. The seedlings grow in the nursery for 8 months, then are planted in the ground. A typical coffee plant grows for 18-25 years. The plant grows flowers, which are small and white and have a lemony-jasmine aroma Then the beans grow: first green, then yellow, and then they are harvested when they turn red.
Next we went to the building where they are sorted, left to ferment, dried, hulled, sorted again, roasted, and bagged. At the end, we got to sample the coffee- Potter drank an espresso! We bought a few bags to bring home, then took the plantation Jeep back to Antigua.
Ali had a little bit of wrap-up work to do at the Habitat office, so we went with her. First we stopped at the hotel, where the volunteers had left behind some donations (mostly candy, to Ali’s delight), then went to the office so she could do a little paperwork. They have a little gift shop selling traditional wares made by people they’ve built homes for. Potter and I got some chocolate, a gourd blackened with ash with designs carved into it, and a little fish made out of woven palm leaves, both of which I’ll turn into Christmas ornaments.
We had a late light lunch at Pitaya, a cute juice bar. We all had jugos de maracuya (passion fruit juice, which Ali had all the time in Colombia but rarely sees here), Ali and I had the Thai salad, and Potter had a chipotle chicken sandwich.
We wandered our way back to Ali’s, stopping in a few stores along the way. At Nim Pot, we bought some woven placemats and napkins, and a little rhino that we’ll hang on our Christmas tree (that’s 4 new ornaments so far!). It’s a large warehouse-style store that sold all kinds of traditional wares: masks, clothing, pottery, religious statues, and all sorts of things made from woven fabric.
We hung out at Ali’s house for a while, napping, laying in the hammock, and playing (new to Ali) phone games. Once we had mustered up some hunger, we went to Mr. Sushi- Kate came too. Ali hadn’t had sushi since coming to Guatemala because it’s expensive here, but compared to NYC prices it was fine. We ordered a variety of rolls (one of which was tempura-fried!), sake, edamame, and miso soup. The girls were in heaven! Our only complaint was and abundance of cream cheese in all the rolls. All in all, totally worth it, though.
We had an early alarm set for the next morning, so we went home after dinner.
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