March 8
I mentioned briefly before about the coffee harvest. I don’t know how long it lasts, and if it’s like in Cambodia there will be a harvest more than once in a year. Near these processing facilities, of which there are at least two along the shore in San Pedro, there is an aroma I will now always recognize. It is not the delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee. It isn’t even very pleasant, but then it doesn’t make you fear walking past the place either.
The cycle is something like this: a guy plants some coffee; he picks the beans and brings them in bags in the back of his truck to a place like this one; they dump the beans into the hulling mechanism that separates the outside from the beans inside; the hulls are then packed up for a fertilizer plant and the beans put back into the bags for the grower to take. Now the grower spreads his beans out in his front yard to dry and after they are dry he puts them back into the bags, back into his truck, and I haven’t seen what happens next but I assume there is an aggregator who packages the beans for market.
Por qué no? why not try some Guatemalan coffee for your next cup?