Category: Café de Colombia – Travelog

Today we meet for the last time on this coffee trip. We are going to visit Cooagronevada1 (a neologism made up of Cooperativa (cooperative) agrocultura (agriculture) and Sierra Nevada (region near Santa Marta)). In 2007, 21 families of coffee farmers joined together to form this cooperative. Comité de mujeres – women’s commitee. Today (2020) there …

In the morning we have breakfast with a view over the green Sierra Nevada. Nevada means snow-covered, but snow is extremely rare here in the Caribbean, even at this altitude. Right after breakfast we take a look at “Finca Buenos Aires”, where we spent the night. The name immediately reminds us of the capital of …

We leave Santa Marta in the morning and drive along the coastal road for a while. Then we head into the Sierra Nevada, the highest coastal mountain range in the world. In jeeps we rock our way higher and higher on mostly unpaved roads until even the dirt roads come to an end. Stopover in …

Today with a stopover in Bogotá, we continue to Santa Marta in the north on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Here we visit the cooperative „Red Ecolsierra“ (literally red = net, eco = eco and Sierra of Sierra Nevada, the region, roughly “eco-net(work) of the Sierra Nevada region”) – first we go to the headquarters, …

    In the morning we have a delicious and hearty breakfast with a special hot chocolate, soup and the ubiquitous arepas, small corn flatbreads. Rich and hearty breakfast. With a jeep, which is really necessary on the steep slopes and slippery mud paths in the rain, we pick up two more roasters. They spent …

  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.   Emergency meeting point with palmtree in …

  We have half a day of free time in Bogotá, so I accompany Xiomy to the “Arte y Pasion Café: Escuela de baristas“1, which means “Café Art and Passion – Barista School”. It was founded to promote the appreciation of good coffee in Colombia itself. For until today, high-quality coffee is mostly exported, while …

After a pleasant night in the local hotel, we climb into the back of a pick-up truck and are driven to Don Omar. His “Finca Flores” is 42 hectares big, around 10 times larger than that of Doña Magdalena. Omar tells us about the rural exodus: in Colombia, too, people prefer to live in the …