Our second day in Monteverde was, of course, a busy one. After an early breakfast we boarded the bus and made our way down the bumpy and winding roads into the rural San Luis Valley. It was a beautiful day and we were able to
see all the way to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Along the way down we stopped at an overlook and met up with Juan. After a quick climb up to an even higher viewpoint, Guillermo explained the history of San Luis Valley. Primarily an agricultural community, San Luis has been working over the last few decades to improve the quality of life of their residents. After finishing his quick explanation (and many of us being distracted by the view), we made our way to the bottom of the valley to our destination: Finca La Bella.
Finca La Bella, as we learned, is quite the interesting project. Residents of San Luis who would like to farm are given a small parcel of land, usually between three and four acres, in the Finca La Bella Community area in order to work and live on the land. They are allowed to sell whatever they need and live right off of their parcel. Here, we visited a few of the residents’ farms and heard some of their stories. The first resident was primarily a coffee farmer and was actually in the middle of harvesting and processing. While he told us some details about his operation, in the background a few American college students were volunteering and processing the freshly picked fruits. This was a unique operation because of its size. Because the plantation was so small, micro as the owner called it, he decided it would make the most sense to do the entire process of coffee creation on his farm from picking to drying. Interestingly enough, one of the volunteers working there actually went to Stephanie’s high school. Weird.
After a short walk we visited Hugo’s farm, which he used mostly to feed his family. Like most of the other members, Hugo tries to grow all his crops without using herbicides. The members here all try to follow the principle of producing healthy food. One of the most fun parts of the tour was processing some sugar cane in the trapiche to make one of the sweetest drinks I’ve personally ever had; it was almost overwhelmingly sweet. After about 45 minutes of relaxing in the sun, we headed to the meetinghouse of the farm for a simple lunch of rice and chicken. On the bus ride back we stopped by the University of Georgia campus.
