Doka Estates Coffee Tour

Doka Estates was a fantastic tour. Our ride was here a half an hour early (who says Costa Rican's are always late?) and the hour drive up the mountain was beautiful. I was a little worried that Oscar and Callym would find this tour dull and boring, after all it was a walking tour all about coffee.... They always seem to surprise us though. The moment we arrived a wonderful lady named Cindy introduced herself and we were on our way. We came at a great time, the four of us were the only ones on the tour, we felt special.

Cindy first brought us to the samples and tasting area, espresso, french roast, pea-berry, house blend (french and mixed), breakfast blend (french, pea-berry and mixed), and decaffeinated. Seeing as we were on a coffee tour, and we wanted the boys to have fun, we let them try some coffee (decaf, don't worry!). They loved it, and I was starting to think that this tour would be ok for them. I have to put in here as well, Cindy loved our kids. From the time we arrived, to the last second she was with us, she was playing with the boys, teasing them, tickling them, asking them questions, and more. She has 3 kids of her own, and you could tell she loved kids. Everyone also commented on Callym's hair. It's gotten so light here in the sun, and people just come up to him and touch it, it's pretty cute.

So, we're off now walking through Doka estates. This place is 450 acres big, and the oldest plantation in Costa Rica. It was started by a German man. There are over 1500 pickers in the harvesting season, and they average about 20 baskets a day (1$ per basket). All of the pickers are Nicaraguan, they come with there families, and all but the youngest children help with the picking. Doka Estates gives the pickers little homes to stay in for free that way all the money they make can be saved for their families.

We saw how the coffee plants start out, and how big they get when they are 6 months, 1 and 3 years. You can't plant them into the earth until they are 3 years old, and the plants will only produce for around 20 years. Here they prune them every 3 years so that the beans stay fresh and healthy. Cindy showed us the green and yellow and red beans. You only pick the red beans, and she asked the boys if they wanted to try to fill a basket with red ripe coffee beans. In a flash they were searching the bushes for anything red. Is this red, what about this one? The were grabbing handfuls of red beans and throwing them in the bucket. How much fun can you have picking beans? We may just have an idea of how to stay in Costa Rica and make money..... pick coffee beans....

Inside the ripe red beans the actual bean is covered in a gel like substance, this is the sugar. Doka estates takes this and uses it to make it's coffee liquor. Did you know that the coffee bean is actually a fruit?

Cindy then took us to the fermenting, sorting drying and packaging areas. Station 1 is where the pickers bring in their baskets for the day and they are weigh, then they are dumped into water and the sorting begins. All the 1st class beans sink to the bottom, and the 3rd class beans float. Here is a sad little fact. Costa Rica exports 100% of their first class coffee crop. Wanna know who gets to drink the best coffee beans made in C.R? Well, 75% goes straight to Starbucks!!! 20% goes to Germany, and 5% (the 3rd class coffee) stay here in Costa Rica for the people. Sad, but Cindy says that here people can't afford 5$ for a bag of coffee. The first class is sold for around 5$ a bag, and the 3rd class is sold for 1$ a bag. Kinda makes you wonder why Starbucks charges over 10 for their coffee?!?

After the beans are sorted they are run through a machine that takes the outer layer of skin off (or the shell). This shell is saved for later. You will see that Doka doesn't waste anything here. This machine also extracts the sugar for using later in liquor's. From there they are put out to ferment. So far all of these processes are done either by hand (the picking) or by water (the machines and sorting are all powered by the streams near by. This is how they did it over a 100 years ago, and it is the way it is still done. Fermenting takes around 20 hours, and is done without chemicals. From there the beans are put out in the sun to dry. Actually, the first class are put out to dry naturally in the sun, the 3rd class is put in a heavy machine and dried that way. This machine isn't powered by water, but heated using the husk and tree clipping of the coffee plant. See, no waste.

The drying process is really cool. Just huge areas of cement covered in beans. The workers need to come every 15 minutes to rake the beans in order to have a complete and even dry. This is where the boys had even more fun. Cindy handed them both a rake and let them go at it.

Cindy took us to the storage area where, after they are dried, the coffee beans are put in burlap sacks. They are stored with the protective husks still on for protection, and stay here for 3 months. Kind of like letting them age, like wine. After 3 months, the husks are taken off, brought to the drying machine for burning, and the beans are either packaged for export roasted or not. (starbucks roasts their own, so for them it's not done here).

Cindy also showed us where they use the shells of the beans. They have there own compost area where they use worms (imported from California - seems the worms in C.R. are lazy). She said that California worms compost the dirt 3 times faster than the worms here. No waste.

Cindy loved our kids so much that she brought us by the children's area here at Doka. They have sort of a day care here for all the young kids to stay safe and fed while their parents, grandparents, and older siblings are out picking beans. The kids had a little fun playing with the other kids, and then we left for lunch. A great lunch, and then we hit the gift shop. Hmm, what did we buy. Well, 4 bags of coffee, some chocolate covered beans, a really cool grinder, some liquors, and coffee soap. Yumm.

The boys were smiling ear to ear the entire day, and both Chris and I were pleasantly surprised. How could 2 little boys have so much fun with coffee. Not sure, but they said it was one of their favorite parts of Costa Rica.

Lucky Lukies Strike Again....

I thought I would check in on a couple we met through the internet back in September. They are a family of 4 moving to Belize for a different life. We were hoping to all meet up and let our kids play, etc. Well, to our surprise this is what I found when got to their blog . Such a sad story, only 4 days in Belize and now what?


One more thing, please don't worry about us going to Belize, these things can happen anywhere in the world, (and we actually had the Jeep broken into twice in Edmonton), but as the title says, we are LUCKY LUKIES!!!!!

Slowly catching up to today....

To get from La Fortuna back to Heredia we decided to re-hire a fantastic driver named Arnold. He was the driver that took us from Heredia to Puntarenas, and he is amazing. He told us where we were driving through, interesting things along the way and drove so nicely over the enormous bumps.
So, Arnold picked us up right on time at noon on Monday from Los Lagos and we were on our way. The drive was beautiful (but we have come to almost expect that here). We drove straight up to a rain forest, different from a cloud forest. Here is rains all the time, there are clouds but in a cloud forest it doesn't always rain. Here it was unbelievable. The quiet and freshness in the air was magical, I was sure there were fairies hiding somewhere around us. I wish I could tell you what the view was from the top, but we were so engulfed in a cloud that you could only see about 10 feet in front of you. I should mention, on our way up the land was covered in greenhousees. Here is where they grow fabulous flowers and plants for export to N. America and Europe. On our way down the land was taken over by coffee plantations. Oh yes, and a cigar factory, we actually passed by a plant where you could come in a roll your own (I thought of you Ron!).

So, we passed through San Ramon, a gorgeous city that we decided we must see more of. Who knows, we may be back here after Belize.....

So, we are now in Heredia. Being homesick a bit still can you guess what the first thing is that we did????


McDonalds

Ugh.

We felt that afterwards! But it was nice, the boys got their happy meals and a toy, and we felt a little better (after a walk). Afterwards we unpacked, and just chilled. Here we have 2 seperate bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room with a tv, a washroom (but no sink?) and a cute little balcony. It feels like a home, something that we have really been craving. It's nice to be in a seperate room than the boys, and last night we watched a movie while the boys were in the next room sleeping. It's been 7 weeks since we've been able to do that!

Today we headed off the the mall, we were looking for the market, but that didn't pan out. The mall was cute, but 90% shoe stores. (ironically Chris needs new shoes, but we didn't find any for him!)

The most exciting thing that happened today was that we made ourselfs dinner for the first time in 7 weeks. It was so cool. I went to the veggie guy across the street and bought 3 large fresh carrots, an onion, 3 banana's and a huge tomato all for 40 cents. Then I went next door to the butcher and bought 2 handfuls of ground beef for 2.40$. Spaghetti was 60 cents, sauce was 75 cents and the cheese was about 1 dollar. It was so yummy, and the boys actually finished their dinner, quite a feat since they haven't done that for a while.

So, we are here. We are happy again, and we feel like we're home somehow. This is where we started our trip, and if you remember, we didn't like it then, but it feels so good to be back. It also feels like our trip here is over, maybe because we've done a complete circle. Not sure.

We're going to go on a coffee tour on Thursday, and we're off to Belize early Saturday morning. Till then, we love you all.

The Lukies......

La Fortuna

Well, we have spent 3 days and nights here in La Fortuna. It's a wonderful place, but not somewhere where we would consider trying to look for a home. I'm not really sure why, it just doesn't feel right. If we needed to choose today I think we would go straight back to Monteverde and Santa Elena, that was by far our favourite place as a family so far.

Anyways, here in La Fortuna, the main attraction is the Arenal Volcano. Everywhere has a spa to pamper you, they use products made with mud from near the volcano, etc. There are many many zip lines and canopy tours, and of course the Gondola up to the look-out tower for the spurts of Lava. This is what we did a few days ago. It was fantastic. You could see Lake Arenal from one side of the platform, and the Volcano from the other. A year ago the Volcano changed it's Lava flow direction, and it now faces directly towards the look-out platform. Lucky us, But Unlucky us, the best time to see the Lava (obviously) is late at night. Being the slow season (we seem to always catch up with both the slow season and the rain.... humm), there were no night tours yet. But we did get to see the 'white' lava during the day, and it was absolutly incredible. We stayed at the top for as long as we could to take in this beautiful site. I hope you like the pictures.

Once we were done, we headed back to the hotel. We spent some time in the actual city of La Fortuna, looking around at the shops and tried a few of the restaurants. I wish I could tell you something really really exciting, but this place just didn't do it for us.

I've tried to get the photo's on here, but it's not working. You can find them here.

New Picutres

selvatoura pictures

To The Volcano

Last night we went out for a nice stroll, we were on the look out for some cool gifts for family back home. After walking and looking for an hour or two it was time for dinner. We were half way to this cute little Indian Restaurant when we noticed that Oscar had fallen asleep on Chris' shoulder. We thought he would wake up, but he didn't, and so Chris left for the hotel, and Callym and I stayed for dinner. We've found it a little harder to be hungry here at times, the altitude, heat, humidity, and so on can really mess with you! Anyways, we had a lot of packing to do, our ride was picking us up at 7:50 the next day and we were off to the Arenal Volcano! Oscar ended up getting around 12 or 13 hours of sleep, and the next beautiful and refreshing morning we were ready to go. There are two different ways to get to La Fortuna, one way is to drive the entire way - a 4 and a half hour drive and only the last 25 minutes is paved. That is a big deal! The second way, and the way we opted for was to take a taxi to Lake Arenal, take a boat across, and take another taxi to our hotel. Taking this route would actually cut off an hour and a half! So, early in the morning, and completely refreshed we were off. The drive was a bumpy one to the lake, but the boys did fantastic. We were nearly to the lake when we all heard a loud "Klu- Klunk" It sounded like something large had fallen off the van. Chris said it was something to do with the Trannie. Our driver called the other van that was taking people to the lake, and it seems as though their van had broken down as well. Too Funny! So we were waiting for another van to come and get us. We were only 5 minutes away at this point. As we were waiting the other van drove by us and smiled, they knew how we felt. So, when we finally got another car, it was 5 minutes to the lake, and we were off on the boat. The boat ride was beautiful. Lake Arenal is huge and calm. The boat ride took 30 minutes, and there was another taxi waiting to take us to the Hotel. The road here was paved and was too amazing! 25 minutes later we were at Los Lagos. Our new home for the next 3 days.

Los Lagos is a resort and spa. Something very common here due to the Volcano. Everyone is offering massages, and treatments with Lava or mud from the volcano. We are off the see it in the next few days. A real Volcano! Too cool. I hope we see some great spurts of Red Hot Lava coming from it!

Lukies Off.....

Poor Little Brave and Clumsy Oscar!

A story told by Oscar...... (not really, it's Tamara)

Three days ago I was playing with my best friend brother around an empty jacuzzi. I jumped in not knowing that 5 feet was a long way for a kids like me. I fell. It hurt. I was crying and crying. My daddy came and found me lying there and took me back to the hotel. My foot hurt alot and it was really swollen, so mom put some ice on it. When daddy looked at it again, he thought it may be broken, so he called the insurance and got a doctor's visit covered for me. We went to reception, and to make a long story short..... Daddy and I went to the clinic, and then the hospital. We got an x-ray done, and were back within 5 hours! It turns out it's not broken or fractured, but it still really really hurts, and is still swollen. But the good thing is that mom and dad get to carry me everywhere now.

Yestaurday I started feeling a bit better and started taking some small steps by myself. We went for dinner while dad was watching the grey cup (Riders Suck, Bombers should have taken the cup), when a big huge wasp/bee thing was flying around our table. I tried to shooo it away a few times, but it wouldn't leave. Then it went into my hair, and when I put my hand there to get it away..... IT BIT ME! I cried again. My hand was hurting so much, and now it was getting swollen. I had to get more ice and medicine. (I like medicine!)

You may think that my story is done.......

But.......

This morning before we left for our trip to Heredia, I wanted to try kicking the football around. Mom said not to, but I really wanted to try my foot out. So I went outside and kicked. It was a great kick, I got lots of air, and it went all the way to the parking lot. So I limped over to get my ball. The ground was still wet from the rain last night, and so when I came back to the patio ( tiled patio), I slipped. My good foot slipped first, and then my bad foot came right out from under me. I tried to break my fall, but I didn't want to let go of my football........ so, my chin and face broke my fall. It's ok, I'm ok. Nothing is broken, I just bit almost all the way through my lip. It was bleeding, and I was crying again.

To quote Oscar correcty, In my arms crying all he could say was....

"mom, not again! Please not again!"

Little crazy man. We're keeping our eye on him now!

By the way, He is fine, just has a fat lip, and a cute little limp when we do let him walk. Just glad he wasn't allergic to the bite!

The TRUTH about Travelling with little kids........

Oh how do I start this blog? Does the title say it all? Does it give you a small hint as to what I am going to write....

Before I start, I want you all to know that the four of us are a strong family. We love each other to death, and will sacrifice and bend over backwards to do whatever it takes to make the others happy. Spending each and every day together is a treat that we wouldn't trade for the world. We are lucky lucky Lukies, and we know it. But.....

There have been trying, TRYING times. There are times when the kids actually wake up whinning, and it seems to continue for the entire day. These are the times when we want to run. Run far away!!! They are good kids, but at times seem very spoiled and unruly. They miss their friends and family. They want their Baba and Gido and Baba. They want their chocha's and Twinkle. They even miss our old Jeep. They want a back-yard to play in, not a small cramped hotel room with no privacy. They want some stability. There was a routine back home, although slight at times, when the kids knew what to do, what to expect. This is something that here they don't have. Dinner is never known, we know we will eat - but when, and where is nearly always up in the air. Sometimes they are having a siesta until 5 pm, and sometimes they are done at 2 pm. Are we changing hotels today, are we driving to a new town, are we looking for a home, or just spending the day at the beach. We miss the little things like : Kraft dinner? Bed time on time! Familiar faces..... Things here are different. In every way, the people, the culture, the food, the customs, the air and the surroundings. Although they are adjusting well, it's still different, and we all need to get use to it.

This is a strange and life changing adventure we are on. We're on our 7th week, but it sure feels longer. When we decided to 'leave' and try something new, it wasn't because we thought Canada was a bad place, we just needed to see what else was out there. I'm not saying we're moving back, but we haven't found our perfect paradise yet either.... It's hard. Leaving your family and friends. Leaving your home and not having a stable place to call your own. Not really having anything to call your own, besides what you have been able to keep in your suitcase. The kids are feeling home-sick, and I'll admit that I am too. What we're doing isn't normal, it's a great adventure, but far from normal. And sometimes normal isn't always right - but sometimes having something normal is good too.
We are in our 7th week now, and that is over 1172 hours where the four of us have been together. TOGETHER for over ONE-THOUSAND-ONE-HUNDRED-AND-SEVENTY-TWO! There have been no breaks. Maybe one or two where we just leave the room, have a beer or a smoke. But basically no break. This (I believe) is more of a problem then having no routine.

Belize is coming up quickly now, but I'm not sure if we should go there as a vacation, or to find a new life. It's a lot of stress this 'finding a new life'. You need to think about a million things all the while keeping your kids happy, fed, safe and not too spoiled. You need to make sure the area is good, there are good schools, kids to play with, things to do, and friends to be made. Friends, yes, that's a hard one, and family here means just the four of us. Here in Costa Rica we have met many many expats, and they all say the same thing. Whether they have lived here for 6 months or 10 years, they are all still expats, gringos, outsiders. Do we want to feel that way? Do want to just have other expats as our only true friends? Belize may be different. But who knows.

I'm a little tired of travelling (as you may be able to tell). And the kids are too. They tell us their having fun, and I believe they are, but they are still home-sick.

Change is good and change is hard. You need willing participants and a wonderful husband who shares your dreams and helps you see the rainbows after the storms. There are rough times, and times of pure bliss. We haven't forgotten where we came from, and we're not scared to come back. But we're not ready yet. There is still a wonderful world to explore and amazing adventures to be had. I think that in order to have a wonderful and fulfilling life you always need to re-evaluate where you are and what you want. It's an ever changing world, and the only way to know what you want is to go out there and look. Sometimes you realize what you had was what you truly want, and sometimes you find something better. We'll keep looking, but know that we miss you too.