Rather than trying to tame wild stallions, fearless Costa Rican fisherman Chito prefers a playful wrestle in the water with his best pal Pocho – a deadly 17ft crocodile. The 52-year-old daredevil draws gasps of amazement from onlookers by wading chest-deep into the water, then whistling for his 980lb buddy – and giving him an affectionate hug. Crazy Chito says: “Poncho is my best friend. This is a very dangerous routine but we have a good relationship. He will look me in the eye and not attack me. It is too dangerous for anyone else to come in the water. It is only ever the two of us.”
Chito made friends with the croc after finding him with a gunshot wound on the banks of the Central American state’s Parismina river 20 years ago. He had been shot in the left eye by a cattle farmer and was close to death. But Chito enlisted the help of several pals to load the massive reptile into his boat. He says: “When I found Poncho in the river he was dying, so I brought him into my house. He was very skinny, weighing only around 150lb I gave him chicken and fish and medicine for six months to help him recover. I stayed by Poncho’s side while he was ill, sleeping next to him at night. I just wanted him to feel that somebody loved him, that not all humans are bad. It meant a lot of sacrifice. I had to be there every day. I love all animals – especially ones that have suffered.”
It took years before Chito felt that Poncho had bonded with him enough to get closer to the animal. He says: “After a decade I started to work with him. At first it was slow, slow. I played with him a bit, slowly doing more. Then I found out that when I called his name he would come over to me.”
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The day began with another full breakfast at Hotel Aranjuez in San Jose, and except for the made to order omelet and the typical rice and beans, every dish was a new item! Wonder how many days they can keep this up?? Today our table was visited by a local squirrel, exciting all us tourists, so of course we took a picture too.
We decided to visit a coffee plantation in the nearby hills of Jan Jose, over 3000 ft altitude. We picked the Doka Estate, out of Alajuela as they offered tours even if it rained. The drive was supposed to be 45 minutes to an hour, but after about an hour we found our taxi driver had never been there either. Luckily I had the phone number and our taxi driver had a cell phone, so we got there 5 minutes after our reservation, and the tour hadn’t left yet. True to the ad, it was a “seed to cup” tour. We learned it takes a full year to grow the seeds into a plant, ready to be transplanted to a bigger container, and another year to grow the plant to be ready to plant in the field.
The plant is more of a shrub than a tree, the top of each one can be reached by the arms of the picker (migrant workers from Nicaragua or Panama), who picks each berry individually, only when they are red, so a plant has to be picked many times, from October until February of each year. They fill a basket, tied around their waist, which when full weighs 25 pounds. A very good picker can pick 30 baskets a day, and gets paid $1.00 per basket!!
After that the berries are taken to a wash bath where they are re-measured, then dumped into a water bath. The good quality beans sink, and are exported, the bad ones float and are sold in Costa Rica!! They are then again processed so the outer red shell comes off leaving from 1 to 3 seeds and again are sorted by size into three categories (biggest is best). After that they are “fermented” for 3 days in a large open vat with some water. It is a natural fermentation, the guide didn’t know what caused it, but I assume it was natural (or wild) yeast, as she said nothing was added. The alcohol and some water is then siphoned off and shipped to another company that makes coffee liquor.
The remaining beans are then dried for 3 days on a concrete pad in the sun and are raked to turn over, every 30 minutes 24/7! After that they spend another day in a gas fired dryer, rotated constantly. They are then stored in bags for 3 months (the berry is still “green”). Then most of the beans are exported in that condition as the gourmet coffee companies (Starbucks gets 60 % of this plantation’s crop), like to do their own secret roasting and blending.
entrance-doka-plantation
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Entrance to the Doka Plantation
Then we saw a roasting room where three levels (light, medium and dark) or roasting is done. This is a very small plant as the only coffee they roast is that sold in their own tourist shop, and are the very highest quality of beans. The low quality beans are sent to another Costa Rican company to roast for the locals and all export beans are sold green.
Tastes of their 7 blends were then offered (John and Ted imbibed; I just toured the gift shop). An interesting fact was that to make decaffeinated coffee the beans are shipped to Germany, where they were decaffeinated through a water process at NO cost, because the German company sells the Caffeine all over the world for other purposes. Doka Estate only pays to ship them over and back to Costa Rica. But again this is a very small % of the crop. All in all it was a very interesting tour taking about 2 hours whicha I would recommend to any visitor.
