Saturday, April 18, 2009

Quindio Day 9 - Saturday

A little over 100 km north of Buga, close to the city of Armenia is the Parque Nacional Del Café – The National Coffee Park. This is a theme park for coffee growing and production combined with rides for children and adults alike.

For curious coffee drinkers the park is a showcase for growing, harvesting, shelling, drying and roasting coffee beans, mainly from Colombian plants but also from plants native to Africa and Asia.
It is fascinating to see old and new methods for extracting the coffee bean from it’s two outer shells, washing the mucus from the bean...
drying the beans in the Colombian sun, reusing the bean casings as fertilizer or as fuel for roasting.

I may be the only person in America who didn’t know that coffee beans are exported as virgins. That is, the beans are roasted to local taste in the country where the coffee processed and consumed. The only coffee beans roasted in Colombia are those used for local consumption of coffee.

Coffee beans pulled from the bush have a tough red outer shell. The outer shell is removed and a sticky mucus is washed from the beans before they are dried on long racks in the sun or in concrete sheds that trap hot air.

After drying the bean’s paper thin inner shell has a light vanilla color.

The dried beans are then tumbled with rotating drums to remove the inner shell revealing grey beans that are then packed in burlap sacks for export to the Americas, Asia or Europe where the beans are roasted to perfection and sold to consumers.

To attract families the park includes a roller coaster, a go-kart track, a water chute and several staged revues with coffee themes. There are other walking trails that are well signposted in both Spanish and English through a bamboo forest, a replica of an Indian burial ground and over a suspension bridge. Cable cars, a chair lift and a railway connect many parts of the park for those weary of walking and there are places to rest, eat Colombian food and – of course – drink Juan Valdez coffee.

This was a very enjoyable day.

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