This day was our last day at EARTH, and our last full day in Costa Rica. After a breakfast meeting, we loaded into Matt’s car to check out some of the facilities at EARTH, and then one last trip to the banana farm.
We found a couple of guys who were harvesting the bananas, which is done with machetes. Watching them run in the heat with bananas on their shoulders made me wonder where they get their energy from. Is it something in the bananas?
We also caught up with a class on the EARTH campus that day, which demonstrated some of that hands-on education I’d been hearing about. The class was like any class I had attended during my own college years, except outdoors, and in Spanish, and with a live animal in the center of it. So, actually, not so similar. But the students stood around the instructor taking notes and asking questions, and the horse was like, “Dude, when do I get to go back to my stall? I’ve got a wicked craving for alfalfa.”
At the end of the day we rode out of town and headed back to San José, mentally saying goodbye to all of the people we’d met and the places we’d seen. Though I loved it all, the one thing I’ll never forget was our day in Providencia. It’s the kind of place I always knew existed, but never thought I’d ever get to see. Most of all, I’ll never forget its coffee, and the people who work to get that coffee into my cup. I have a real respect for Providencia coffee, and I know I’ll always look for it every time I walk into a Whole Foods.
{ 0 comments… add one now }