Coffee Costa Rica 1977

Tracks of the StoneBear Copyright MCMLXIII Uncle Hargus ALL Rights reserved

ROF= Ring of fire Odyssey  MEF-H = Marine Expeditionary Force- Hargus 

StoneBearTracks journey to Costa Rica

Cartago Costa Rica Summer 1977

Coffee Costa Rica 1977 UofAla 

A good cup of coffee is one of my weaknesses. It may be a sin to enjoy strong black coffee so much. Some real southern women know how to make breakfast sawmill gravy with coffee; they are rare and prized.

Marine Corps coffee is good and strong, but they get trash beans... maybe 2nds that weren't roasted correctly or burned, and it's often bitter or harsh from poor acidity and body; government contracts are for the cheap bid grounds. Some units coffee a spoon would stand up in the cup.

So when I get to Costa Rica it's like I've gone to coffee heaven. Costa Rican Aricaba beans are among the best in the world and the best coffee is grown between 3,000' to 5,000' elevation. Even the lower elevation coffee is still better than most other countries coffee. Maybe it's a combination of the tropical climate and mix of volcanic ash soil. I wanted to go back and study coffee and graduate from being a novice connoisseur to a aficionado of coffee.

My home base was at David and Donna Little's coffee finca - plantation - in Cartago. David, retired Air Force Colonel Command pilot in Korea, rented the finca house on a coffee plantation for USD 150 a month; I learned a lot from Dave. He was my mentor.

David and Donna Little, Ex-pats at their "Ranch Minimo" = Little Ranch coffee plantation, Cartago, Costa Rica 1977.

The grove is on both sides of the access road. At picking time a farm tractor would pull the loading trailer behind and Tico/ Tica campesino peasant plantation workers would pick coffee beans off the trees into bushel baskets by hand, and bring the bushels to this center road to load onto the trailer, then go back an pick more beans.  in 1977 the campesinos got maybe $.50c a bushel basket for picked coffee beans,... maybe if the worked all day could pick 6 bushels = $3 a day for labor. The picking season only lasted a few months and was regional picking as to the altitude for ripeness of certain beans

I walked all over the plantation and saw the agriculture operation at ground level from the nursery seedlings to replace older non-producing trees, to the tractors and packing crates the campesinos used in the groves to pick beans.

The outside hulls of coffee beans are green and turn red when ripe. Juan "Whit" Valdez picking coffee.

coffee tree seedlings to replant and replace older non producing coffee trees on the plantation.

A Tica/ campesina lady picks the weeds out of the coffee seedling trees. Coffee is very labor intensive. This Tica probably made $1 a day.

A couple thousand coffee tree seedlings were planted every year for natural grove attrition.  

At a different plantation I saw the water vats to soak the beans to shed their outer hulls, and the concrete slabs to spread out the beans out for sun drying. Down in Cartago near Alphonso' bar there was a cafe that roasted their beans and ground them for packaging and sale of ground coffee. It was a good education in coffee... better than anything I learned in business school at Alabama.

The red buildings were the soaking barns to put the coffee beans into water vats to soak the outerhulls and separate from the bean. the concrete slabs below were to spread the beans out to sun dry, then load into burlap 100lb bags for shipping.

Looking down on the town of Cartago, Costa Rica. This is on the road to volcano Irazu about half way up the mountain. ~2,000' elev. There was a neat little cafe to get a bite to eat. Seemed good until a waiter poured a cup of coffee with a cockroach in it.... eeewwwww. so Latin America.

Above the cafe stop this land had been cleared and was being planted with coffee trees. This coffee plantation will eventually produce a premium quality Costa Rican Aricaba coffee bean as this grove is ~ 2,000' elev. The tractor in the field is carrying seedlings and the bags of ?fertilizer? that are the white sacks lined up on the left to right rows.

Coffee really was less than a dime. A Costa Rican C-Colon was C 8.54: 1 US dollar and you'd get come centivos back. All cafes had coffee, many had an espresso, and I mean a real expresso! These guys would brew a strong cup of Costa Rican coffee and reduce it down to the size of a shot glass serving. They'd add some real local azucer - sugar, and a bit of pure cream... it was still dark black,.... and the thickness/ viscosity of syrup. A couple of those expressos in the morning would get you cooking into the day quick!

So I had my plan. Go back to Tuscaloosa at the end of the summer, finish college in another year. Work for a year and scrape up as much money as I could. Go back down to Costa Rica and make my coffee supply network direct from the growers coffee plantations. Pay a premium price and import direct to my horizontal business plan of:

1. import the finest Costa Rican coffee beans.

2. Own the roasters and develop my own line of fine coffees, and fine spiced coffees.

3. Open a coffee shop in Tuscaloosa, and get this... probably a dozen more starting with/ in university towns.

 ?Does this sound like a plan?

It was a plan way ahead of its time. A chain of coffee shops in 1977; imagine that. One of the 400 level "professors" in business school told me coffee by itself wouldn't make it/ wouldn't be profitable... coffee houses by them self were for beatniks and hippies. I thought that was kind of dated thinking.

I managed to learn a lot about business and commerce in spite of going to business school at UofA. I'f I'd included something about Alabama footbawl I would have gotten more done if I'd acted on my instincts and ignored the business professors at Alabama; they were a big waste of time. They were light on teaching academics; what they really taught good was elite-ism. It really was the training ground for who you know, NOT what you know. Had I worn a blue gaunt shirt and khaki pans of the frat boy decor... I would have been given the elite respect. When asked... I told people that I went to Bull Connor University; THE most racist institution in the US. Just last year,... in 2013,... black students were still turned down for admission into white sororities and fraternities.

Up above the clouds at around 3,000' elev on the way to volcano Irazu.

Also Cocao. I saw some campasinos that harvested cocao beans and dried them on waist high drying racks the size of a sheet of plywood. A metal wire screen kept the beans surrounded by air for drying. The pods were about the size of a banana only thinner like a snap pea. The pods would turn brown and at some point they'd break open and spread the cacao beans on the screen to dry. Now let me tell you, when you break open that brown cacao pod and hold it up to you nose... this was the richest smell of chocolate I've ever smelled. I still remember that smell of the cacao pod so rich. You could gain weight it was so rich.

The cacao beans were the size of almonds and looked similar. Fresh picked pods were a little sticky. Dried beans looked like brown almonds. I bit into a cacao bean and the taste was so bitter... it was so pure.... you couldn't stand the taste... think the bitterness of dark chocolate x 100... one bean would go a long way in processing.

With the raw sugar production so abundant in Costa Rica my business plan was to experiment and develop the 3 main materials... Cocao, sugar and cream/ milk into fine chocolates. When I got back to college... I did graduate a year later, and was immediately swept up into the rat race. It was a good plan; maybe next life.

You never drink twice from the same stream.

StoneBearTracks Copyright Uncle Hargus MCMLXIII ALL blog posts/photographs/video ALL Rights reserved 

ALL Blog posts/photographs/video Copyright MCMLXIII ALL Rights Reserved 

Bolsa 1977

Tracks of the StoneBear Copyright MCMLXIII Uncle Hargus ALL Rights reserved

ROF= Ring of fire Odyssey  MEF-H = Marine Expeditionary Force- Hargus 

Costa Rica 1977     independent study   Uof Ala

The Bolsa Nacional de Valores

While on this journey into Latin America I went to downtown San Jose to a plain looking glass window storefront to the Cost Rican Bolsa; The Costa Rica Stock Exchange. The Bolsa Nacional de Valores , translated "Bag of Money".

The picture here is from the mezzanine overlook of the "Bolsa" ... the "Bag of Money" stock exchange. 

 There was a chalk board... "Tote Board" up on a wall... some clear glass windows onto the street.

About 15 companies stock were quoted as to the last sale of stock by the dozen stockbrokers congregated around a circular trading post in the middle of the room. The left side wall in this 30'x30' room is a bank of phone booths. The brokers standing around waiting for order looked like well to do businessmen.

I remember a couple of the companies... the Costa Rican cement manufacturing company... a few more companies stock quoted for buy/ sale. ReCope - Re-co-pay- was an oil/ energy co-op and I'd see the refinery storage tanks while riding the bus between Cartago and San Jose; they may have been a co-op. There were a lot of small co-ops in Costa Rica as most operations were small mom and pop business without the assets to raise significant capital, or pledge collateral for large loans.

I wanted to buy a share of stock of something... so I could have a stake in Costa Rica. The stockbroker I talked with was nice but said a one share stock purchase was too much paperwork to justify.

I talked with a real debonair guy.... a real slick looking high European Costa Rican, dressed in a tailored suit guy ... ?Deago? He was a real King Rat of Costa Rica in his $1,000 dollar suit while peasants walked on the street in front of the building. There were middle class too; he projected his European aristocracy above them equally. What I remember mostly of this guy was this; a sunny place for shady characters.

I remember after talking with this guy that I had the urge to go take a shower and wash off the sleaze; he was that arrogant and vain. I talked with a couple of ex-pats that said they had heard that some friends investments somehow just didn't work out and there was nothing they could do to recover their money. A decade later I got some mailing list junk mail about an investment conference in Orlando. The topic on protecting wealth "Tax Shelters in Costa Rica" and there was his picture. I suspect there were some tax dodging con games going on that would blindside the gullible investor.

There were agricultural commodities produced ie... coffee, bananas, coaco, palm oil, sugar... primary agrarian culture with some light to medium manufacturing in a few places. Tourism was a major industry and almost every business and individual would gladly accept US dollars and offer a premium trade over the official 8.54:1 dollar.

But I actually got to see and stand on the floor of the Costa Rican Bolsa in 1977. A good day!

You never drink twice from the same stream. 

StoneBearTracks Copyright Uncle Hargus MCMLXIII ALL blog posts/photographs/video ALL Rights reserved 

ALL Blog posts/photographs/video Copyright MCMLXIII ALL Rights Reserved

Costa Rica 1957? or 1977

Tracks of the StoneBear Copyright MCMLXIII Uncle Hargus ALL Rights reserved

ROF= Ring of fire Odyssey  MEF-H = Marine Expeditionary Force- Hargus 

StoneBearTracks       Journey into Latin America 1977

Costa Rica 1977.... or ?1957?       Uof Ala independent study

Walking around San Jose in 1977 it was very common to see older vintage cars.

This looks like a 1957 ?Plymouth Savoy?

In international trade tariff rates determine the imports into a country. On luxury items like cars, the tariff rate was was often 100%. That meant if an automobile - in 1977 - cost $10,000... at the dock a customs tariff was added onto the item as a tax that went to the country.

That new 1977 auto that cost $10,000... at the import dock, now cost $20,000USD. So older cars were fixed, repaired, and maintained as they were really worth twice their value.

I saw many autos that would be considered vintage in the states.    That is Dan Flynn by this old Plymouth.

Same with durable goods... ie... a refrigerator. Costa Rica was a primary agrarian society. Most campesinos didn't own a refrigerator because it was very expensive... and many mom and pop small business vendors sold local produce and you went to the Mercado -- the local market-- every day to buy food.

There is no such thing as frozen chickens in the supermarket. This is how you buy a chicken for dinner in 1977.

This couple had a small business store inside the Cartago Mercado, the market. Notice the bananas on the shelf for sale. Those were probably picked fresh within 24 hours and let me tell you a banana dacuri made with real fresh bananas had a taste that would knock you down it was so good.

People in the US don't really understand fresh. In the supermarkets when they buy a banana... that banana -- a hand of bananas is the whole stalk picked off the tree... the rings of bananas are "fingers" of the hand of bananas-- was picked green 6 weeks before. Transported to a collection point and sold at auction for pennies. then transported to the docks in Limon on the Carribean,... or to Puntarenas on the Pacific,... to load onto a ship for transport to the US.

In a US supermarket these bananas are green and still not ripe.

It may be 3 to 4 days before a ship comes to port... maybe a week. Loading ship... might be another few days; ship won't leave port until it's full of cargo. A few days ship to Savannah, or Philly/ NYC on the East coast. ... to LA/ San Francisco/ Seattle on the Pacific coast.

Unload at the docks into trucks for 300 mile radius markets... Rail for longer distance markets. And when you pick that banana off the shelf at the supermarket... with a still green hue... it's maybe 4 to 5 weeks since it;s been picked. A few days on the kitchen counter and you banana turns to the ripe yellow... you eat it and think this really tastes good; I like ripe bananas and fruit.

These are starting to ripen... a little more yellow... still green.

Trust me... you eat a fresh banana picked ripe that morning... you are spoiled forever!

This street vendor had mostly pineapples on his cart. I'd buy a pineapple for a Costa Rican Colon C-8.54: to 1 US Dollar. A pineapple-- fresh picked that morning cost 8 1/2cents. I'd buy a pineapple and cut with a pocket knife... absolutely wonderful rich fresh taste.

Same thing with pineapples. they are picked green and shipped.

This pineapple in a US supermarket has not even begun to ripen.

One of the things I enjoyed was to stop in local cafes and get a fruit plate for breakfast. A big bowl of fresh Costa Rican fruit would cost 2 to 3 Colon... a quarter, and they were fantastic! An expresso coffee and a fruit plate in the morning in Costa Rica in 1977... you were ready for the day!

Still too green, this pineapple needs maybe another week+, and will begin to develop a reddish color.

This guy had FRESH pineapples he picked that morning and tasted great!

This reddish color is getting closer to being ripe.

*** also ... Platinos... "Plantaines" is what they are called in supermarkets. Platinos is the slang name. They look just like bananas... but they are a fruit/ vegetable??? .... they are close to a potato/ starch vegetable... skinned like a banana they are cut into rounds and fried. similar to french fries... a dash of salt and pepper and they taste good!!!

Plantains... Platinos are NOT bananas. 

Platinos are served as a side order on a "casada" plate... the "blue plate special" in Costa Rica. A casada plate would be served with some pollo - chicken meat... or some pork... arroz - rice, cooked w/ some matequella= butter/ lard... some fried platinos... and some refried beans... a really good plate / dinner for 6 to 8 Colon... about 50 to 75c cents for a lunch plate.

One of the days I traveled with Gary West we ate in a Costa Rican cafe... and as we finished eating a Tico guy came around and offered us to buy a cigarette -- an after dinner cigarette-- for 3 cents out of the/ his pack; that was his business... selling cigarettes. This was Latin America at its best in 1977/ pristine. Glad i got to see this.

You never drink twice from the same stream. 

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