Coffee

So, everybody knows that Guatemala has the best coffee, right?!? Well, they do =) And after living in Antigua, Guatemala for just
2 1/2 short months and drinking multiple cups of coffee every day, I now continue to start every morning with a cup of Guatemalan coffee. Maybe that will change once I'm rushing off to work every morning, but for now I will savor each and every yummy cup! While I never toured any of the coffee farms around Antigua, I took a tour of a village called San Antonio Aguas Calientes where a group of ladies showed us some of their customs and traditions like weaving, marriage rituals, coffe-making, religous customs, and cooking.

This is a photo of coffee, it's all picked by hand. The coffee pickers are paid per pound that they pick, it gives lots of people jobs but doesn't pay good, and just imagine how much work would go into picking off every one of those coffee seeds.


Then, ladies like this woman from San Antonio Aguas Calientes have to de-shell the coffee bean after it's been dried and get it out of the shell. After that they use the same device as in the photo below to crush the coffee bean in order to have coffee grounds. Now, it looked easy, but believe me I made some coffee grounds and it is hard work!!! I'm so thankful that I don't have to do that in order to make my cup of coffee =)

Once there are coffee grounds the coffee is ready, but there weren't any coffee makers in this village . . . well, a pot, water, and a fire - that's all they needed! So, the little black pot kinda in the middle of the below photo has the coffee in it! These ladies also made chicken pepian, a traditional Guatemala dish and tortillas for our group from the language school. I did get to make a tortilla also . . . and it got cooked and I ate it, but let's just say that my tortilla didn't look like theirs!!

Life in a Guatemalan village isn't easy. These ladies aren't in costum, this is the clothing that they wear everyday. Making coffee or tortillas this way isn't a thing of the past, it's just part of their daily life. It is always a reminder of the luxuries that I enjoy daily and usually just take for granted! So, if you've never had a cup of Guatemalan coffee I highly recommend that you buy some and try it . . . I think that you'll love it! And you can support the coffee industry of Guatemala while your at it =) Enjoy!!!