For this weekend, it was the first weekend trip with ICDS. It was a day trip to Doka Estate Coffee Tour, located in Alajuela. We met at ICDS at 8am and took us about 2 hours to get there, maybe a little less. Our tour guide was very informative and I had no idea that it was such a long process to prepare coffee beans. The beans first grows from a little plant and make it way up to a brush where it grows tons of berries. Those berries are where the coffee beans come from. There are two kinds of berries, the red ones and peaberries. The red ones are the normal ones and peaberries are the undeveloped ones. Although the peaberries are undeveloped, the tour guide informed us that they are the same quality as the red ones. The only difference is the taste. The workers carries about 40 lbs of beans in each bin on their waist each day, which is very impressive. Those bins are brought to the machines to start the process of making coffee beans. It includes peeling, storage, sun drying, and roasting. This whole process takes 3-4 years! After the tour, we got to visit the coffee shop and the butterfly sanctuary in the estate. It was beautiful. I must say the coffee tasted great (even though I don’t drink coffee). Even after the milk and sugar, there was still a very rich taste in the coffee, unlike some where the taste is masked from all other flavorings. I enjoyed it.
On Saturday, Mary, Mary, Julie, and I went to Jaco beach for a day trip. It was only 2 hours away by bus. It was a very nice and sunny day at the beach. The beach wasn’t crowded at all, which I liked, and the sand was darker than other beaches that I have been before. For lunch, we met up with Jenna and Kristen from the Developmental Studies program and we went to a restaurant with a really nice pool. It was crazy because there were two artists filming a music video as we were eating. We were wondering what was going on because there were models getting there hair and makeup done. We learned that they are from Panama and now living in North Carolina. It was quite interesting. We even got a picture with them, haha. For the rest of the day, we just chilled and relaxed on the beach. We caught the 6pm bus back to San Jose.
