Visitors will be familiarized with coffee production
IAN STALKER
Interior Colombia’s Finca del Cafe can offer tourists food, lodging and, of course, a home-grown cup of Joe.
The coffee plantation is found near the city of Pereira in the heart of Colombian coffee country and welcomes guests, providing them with tours that educate them on the production of coffee and also offering them stays in a hotel and restaurant dining.
Area tour guide Johani Andres Gaviria Lopez notes guests will even be provided with ponchos — which he notes are versatile, being used among other things to swat mosquitoes — and the type of baskets plantation workers use to carry picked coffee beans, with the visitors able to try their hand at gathering some of those beans.
“You’ll interact with the culture,” Gaviria states. “You’ll interact with the farm.”
“You (visitors) find the atmosphere, the food and the tradition (of a coffee plantation),” adds Finca del Cafe’s Dario Moncayo.
The timing of a coffee bean harvest is all critical, Moncayo adds. “It’s like an orange — if you eat it when it’s green, it doesn’t taste very good,” he says, adding that producing coffee is “an art.”
Finca del Cafe tours have been available for years, with Gaviria Lopez praising the move from its depending solely on coffee production to combining producing coffee and generating tourism revenue.
Coffee filtering classes are also available.
Coffee is very much ingrained in the culture of Colombia, with the Juan Valdez image being a national icon and UNESCO having officially recognized Colombian Coffee Culture Landscape.
“Colombian coffee is the best in the world because of the diversity,” says Bogota-based tour guide Nicolas Pineda Salazar, who adds that the likes of Costa Rica produces “amazing” coffee but Costa Rican coffee lacks the diversity of Colombian coffee because of Costa Rica’s smallish size.
Normally omnipresent Starbucks at times has struggled to find a footing in Colombia, having to compete against hugely popular Colombian coffee chain Cafe Juan Valdez.
Gaviria Lopez says a Finca del Cafe visit is worthwhile for those who are curious about coffee production. “I like this because it gives you the experience of a farm.”
And Pineda Salazar says that while a visit to a Cafe Juan Valdez outlet provides a more Colombian experience than dropping in on a Starbucks, that doesn’t mean that he shuns Starbucks.
“I love the carrot cake,” he reports.
More information on the Finca del Cafe can be found at fincadelcafe.com.
