Around The World In 80 Waves

The staff of the embassy were having an away day at a coffee plantation just down the road from Antigua and were kind enough to invite me to join them for the afternoon.

Phil and I took a short drive to the plantation after lunch.

Now I am not a huge filter coffee fan because I can’t think of any other drink that you might have that you would still be tasting half an hour after having consumed it.

However I was looking forward to getting a better appreciation of what is required to put a brew in a cup in front of me. he planatation was huge and you can see the ripe red fruits on one of the bushes here.

Before I eloborate further on that I wanted to show you this picture of my clean shaven self with Carmen and Eusenia who have been looking after me at the Residence, which was taken at the plantation.

As you can see I am a tad taller than the ladies and the fellas here are not a great deal nearer my height.

It was for this reason that my lip warmer got removed yesterday. It was a bit of a pointless disguise here.

There may yet be another facial creation on this trip, but for now I am happy to look 10 years younger again. (At least that is what the staff tell me.)

We took a guided tour of the plantation seeing the whole of the production process. It begins with this nursery of young saplings that will later be fused on to existing bushes.

The ‘cherries’ from the bushes are hand picked with spoilt or damaged ones cast aside. From this point the low quality cherries are further sifted by a floating process akin to that for identify a witch in medieval times, with the naff ones being kept aside for the production of instant coffee!

A machines squeeze the beans out of the cherries and the beans undertake a drying process which is done naturally in the sun. You can see the guy here turning them over to ensure there are no bikini marks on their tan.

There are then further hand sifting processes to ensure the quality of beans is maintained, before the beans are ready for roasting and then packaging.

Can somebody put the kettle on?