It’s been quiet around the blog. Too quiet. Buckle up friends, I’ve been cooking. While you couch potatoes enjoy the cozy safety of your homes I’ve crossed an ocean to find some new content. I’m in Honduras now. Driving a car so small that it can pass under the huge pick-up trucks that share the road with us. Road is of course an euphemism. There are so many potholes. Some are so deep that the whole car could be parked inside, no exaggerations.
My destination is Marcala, one of the coffee hotspots in the picturesque mountains of Honduras. I swerve as a dog jumps in front of my car. I have places to be. My girlfriend found a number of a coffee plantation online. The son of the owner arranged for us to meet with his dad, who will show us around.
He picks us up with a massive pick-up. Don Oscar, mucho gusto. We sit down in a coffee shop in town. He tells us how he started from nothing in the mountains. Tragic childhood. Death of a parent. Poverty. And a dream. He slept outside between his first coffee plants. Bought his first car without shoes just to make a point. Started the collective. Bought more land. Brought the community on board. Created the infrastructure to process the coffee. Negotiated prices with buyers. He is one of the official representatives of the coffee industry in Honduras. We begin to realise who is taking us for a trip today. A living legend. One of the guys who built the whole industry in the region.
He knows everybody. Greets them by name, handshakes everywhere. We visit his quality control lab and packing station. A huge plant. Capacity of 25.000 bags of coffee. Per day. All employees are from the region. We take a dirt road. The pick-up needs differential lock to climb it. We’re in the mountains. After 15 mins coffee plants start to appear everywhere. We wade through them, try some fruits. He knows which variety each plant belongs to. I’m in heaven.
A coffee plant
He takes us to his childhood house. In the middle of the mountains. We meet his brothers, who still live there. We chat about politics. Try some home-made wine. We sit at the table where prices are negotiated. Ambassadors have been here. We even see the official documents stating property rights. They are hand-written, from 1943.
Off we go with the truck. We pass by his aunts house. She invites us for soup. The best I’ve tasted in a very long time. We feel adopted. So much warmth in every interaction. But there is more to see. We discuss water supply in the region. There are trenches dug next to the road. They are part of a project to create better tab water supply.
We arrive at another plant. I have no feeling for square meters, so I’ll be american and estimate the size in nonsense units: Ten football fields. Three fields are reserved to dry coffee. There’s machinery to remove the flesh of the coffee fruits, to wash them and to bag them up. There wasn’t even electricity there when the land was bought.
We finish our tour in a restaurant. Talking about life. My head spins because my Spanish is not the best and I try to understand everything. What a day. What a life.
Group picture with Don Oscar