Today we are lucky: the flight is not cancelled again – and really short.
In contrast to Bogotá, which is 2640 m above sea level and often a little cooler, it is scorching hot in Pitalito. Even at the emergency assembly point there is a palm tree.
The way from the airport to San Adolfo takes a long time – the road is closed in several places. Again and again, queues of trucks and motorbikes form in front of us. At least this gives us a little more time to take a look at the surroundings. For example, we see a huge monoculture plantation – obviously coffee is grown here for the bulk buyer Nestlé. How different this cultivation seems without the beautiful shade trees that “our” coffee farmers have everywhere. Monotonous and desolate, Nestlé has coffee tree after coffee tree – there is no room for diversity of nature here.
We reach the coffee laboratory of the roasting cooperative in San Adolfo quite late, say hello and look around a bit. Andrés from the cooperative has obviously waited for us to roast in order to coordinate which roasting degree the importers prefer for testing. Since our arrival was very delayed, he is in for a long night of roasting the different coffee samples one by one. A single roast takes 15-25 minutes and we will taste 12 samples the next day.
While Andrés devotes himself to the coffee roasting process, we visit a nearby pizzeria and make friends with the local children. They are obviously delighted with our visit – it’s probably not that often that a larger group of somewhat awkward people stumble through the place and are surprised that when they order a pizza, there is only one slice of pizza on the plate.
After this dinner we spent the night with people from the cooperative at their fincas (farms).
