Over these past two weeks we have learned about every step, process, and aspect in coffee growing, milling, roasting, selling, and buying. Costa Rican culture, industry, and environment all play an enormous role in the coffee industry. In my case, I focused heavily upon how each aspect of the coffee industry in Costa…
Tag: David Muscarella
Cooperative, Helping Hand for Farmers
Today, leaving our homestays for the night, we traveled to the Dota coffee roasting and packaging plant. Dota functions as the headquarters for a cooperative of over 900 coffee growers in Costa Rica. By allowing for small coffee farms to pool their resources and experience, a cooperative allows for these farmers to experience a larger…
ICAFE: the FDA of Coffee
Today we visited the ICAFE in Costa Rica. The ICAFE is the Institute of Costa Rican Coffee and its job is to monitor, research, and inform all things coffee for Costa Rican farmers. Much of their research and development is going into creating a fungus resistant, more productive, and higher quality coffee plants. Not only…
Monteverde’s Cloud Forests
Today we departed from our hotel in Monteverde, however, before we left we visited the cloud forest reserve. This reserve has secondary and primary forests full of beautiful wildlife and greenery. The locals we met while there, like the Quaker Don Ricardo and the Tico farmer Don Guillermo, played a large role in the protection…
Chilling on the Farm
Today we visited Life Monteverde, a sustainable coffee farm with some very interesting methods and ways of creating low-impact farm. The life of a Tico farmer is very interesting and complex. They are constantly having to change and adapt their ways of farming to cope with unexpected changed in the world around them. Engineering and…
Traveling Costa Rice…by Bus
Today we left behind our home stays in place of a green mountain, Monteverde. While traveling the four hours to get there we experienced the different views and scenes that Costa Rica has to offer. We saw the dry lowlands transform into dense forested areas without much human life in between and then to sweeping…
San Jose From Home
Today was an interesting day for me. While I did not go to San Jose with the group because of a sickness I developed in the nighttime, I still learned about San Jose. San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica and has developed around the trade of coffee and bananas. What jumpstarted this trade…
Costa Rica’s Coffee
Today we toured the Doka coffee plantation and Café Britt, learning about the complete process of how coffee goes from field to cup. While visiting Café Britt we learned that tourists go wild over their coffee, as we did, while Ticos do not drink it often. This may seem odd considering that Café Britt was…
Relevant Issues in Costa Rica
Today Dr. José Sánchez gave us a brief overview of Costa Rican politics, economics, and the resulting effects felt by the Ticos. Listening to him raised several questions that were answered by his information. Firstly, we learned about the development of Costa Rican politics and its hand in the economy. A question I posed for…
Stranger in Costa Rica
Walking around Costa Rica on the first day taught me some things: Ticos WILL stare at you if you’re above average height, speaking to the locals made me realize I probably should have paid attention in Spanish class more, and I definitely shouldn’t walk around alone. In reality my impressions of Costa Rica were slightly…
Costa Rica…Finally
Hi, my name is David Muscarella and I am going to Costa Rica in the summer of 2018. Next year I will be a sophomore in chemical engineering. I am also, tentatively, minoring in bio-engineering. I love the outdoors and I’ve spent the majority of my life hiking, fishing, hunting, and doing anything I can…