San Cipriano - jungle mototrains of the Choco

Last Monday the kids had a holiday, and Eric headed off with the kids to a famous place that we had heard a whole lot about - San Cipriano.  It is famous for the locals using the old railroad track with wooden carts and motorcycles, called brujitas.  It turned out to be that and a whole lot more.  

First we had to get over there, and It is a long and curvy road to Buenaventura, that got the best of us last time we tried, but we made it in time. Jumped off the side of the highway and hiked down to the town, where there was some endearing mix of total disorganization and the services being organized into cooperatives, with tickets, etc.  

We got our ticket and jumped on the bruita, a set of crude wooden benches to which a motorcycle is bolted on.  We had a real cool driver, "JP" who was all ready to go.  But then we had to wait a whole long time because there was lots of traffic coming down the track and its all managed by radios at each end to only have traffic moving in one direction at a time, ( its like a 15-20 minute trip)  So we were told that because of a local funeral there was lots of extra traffic on the track and everything was getting disorganized.  

We also got to see what happened when the radio relay system doesn't work.  A brujita coming the other way with a whole load of visitors had to get off the track, lift the cart and the moto off the track, and sit on the sidelines while we went by.

The part that I hadn't quite figured out before we got there, is that they are basically taking you to a remote Afro-Pacific village, in the jungle, where there are a set of trails to different waterfalls and swimming holes along a beautiful and clean river.  There were even tubes to rent for us to go down some small rapids in.  It was a lovely place, and with 2 kids tired and rain coming, we did less exploring than I would have liked, but had a nice time on the river. And we have already learned from other weekends, people here love to go out to the river with their whole family, and while away a warm afternoon wading and sitting in a cool river.  

On the way out we took the train a different direction uphill to a different terminus.  This was the town of Zaragosa.  Along the way there was spectacular jungle scenery, and a creepy tunnel, and views out to the river. In the river  bank I kept seeing huge earth movers behind piles of gravel and I wondered what kind of environmental disaster there was. Later after I got home I figured out that Zaragosa was an epicenter of a recent wave of environmentally harmful gold mining.  Such a contrast from the pristine jungle and swimming holes.  

and here is the video of the journey

The best coffee in the world - in Cali!

The Best Coffee in the World - Gesha Cerro Azul - Cafe Granja La Esperanza

I say that ironically - I am skeptical of rankings, or that something would be considered the best of the world. 

But it turns out that there are a few different highly regarded international competitions, most visibly the Specialty Coffee Association of America.  And there is a coffee that has been winning a lot. Gesha Cerrro Azul.  ( SCAA winner 2012 2013 2014)   Gesha is a varietal from Ethiopia, introduced to Panama, and now grown with incredible care and dedication just outside of Cali.  And it turns out the warehouse and business office is in Cali, so I dropped them an email full of adulation and pleading, and they had me over for a cup of coffee.  So there I was, Tuesday morning, sampling the best cup of coffee in the world.  Muchisimas Gracias al Sr Felipe Paz!!!

One interesting angle to the story is an Oakland connection. I have been following the Instagram of Steven Vick, the green bean buyer world traveler and interesting person extraordinaire, for Blue Bottle Coffee. Much of my education on great coffee had been through Blue Bottle, at least 10 years ago at the Berkeley Farmers Market. Steven Vick had just been in Cali, and that was one thing that led me to contact the growers myself.  So the loop into my story is that right when I got there and met Felipe Paz, he pulled out a sachet of Blue Bottle roasted coffee, that had just won an award, and grinded it and prepared a Chemex.  So there I was sipping a coffee grown 2 hours from my house in Cali, and roasted in Oakland California a couple of weeks ago.   And futhermore, contemplate that the entire supply of this coffee is exported as green beans ( as is the majority of Colombian coffee) ,  so it is not available for purchase within Colombia!  

Thats $10 for 50grams of coffee, if you are lucky enough to find it

I learned a lot in a brief visit, how much extra they do to take care of the plants, ( 95 steps instead of a normal 16 steps)  how much care is taken in processing and post-processing, and a little bit about the super rarified high end trade.  Lots of fascinating parallels to wine in the terroir, the optimal stressing of the plant, the fragility of the sugars and when and how to harvest and select, etc.  

One super interesting thing I learned was about that the coffee in green form ( the way it is exported and the way I buy it at home) it is still a living seed.  A lot of the care of coffee is to dry it and keep it cool and conditioned, but keeping the living organism of the seed alive is a key to how long it will be storable.  

There is also a cool angle about how it is exported, all of the coffee is sold through a single exporter, Sustainable Harvest, but who is very open about connecting the roasters and the growers - an “open relationship model”  One other fascinating thing is that all these different awards at competitions are due to being roasted by all different roasters in the US ( who are competing with each other)  Imagine a wine competition where winemakers started with the same grapes and competed to beat each other with their own wines.  

One thing that is amazing to me is that the famous area for coffee the “Eje Cafetero” is North of Cali and towards Medellin. The new highly sought after places are several hours south, in Huila and Nariño.  But this amazing coffee is grown in nearby Valle de Cauca, only a couple of hours from Cali.  I have asked to visit the farm itself, but if not we will at least go and drive around in the area with some of our next visitors. 

And finally there is a terrible lack of good coffee in Cali, Colombia.  That is another long post, but sadly the gourmet coffee culture has yet to arrive here.  So it made getting to taste the best coffee in the world, in a warehouse in weird neighborhood.  ( the Taxi driver thought I was crazy - leading him around Barrio Industrial with my iphone) 

Deportivo Cali 4-3 over Los Milionarios de Bogota

We finally got to go see the local futbol team, Deportivo Cali, at the big stadium in the middle of town, Pascual Guerrero Stadium.

The drama was that the League plays 18 games and this was Week 15.  The top 8 teams get to classify for the tournament at the end of the year.  Deportivo Cali after a struggling season and a series of losses was in 7th place.  They had to win at least one more game to make it on to the tournament.  They faced perennial rivals the Milionarios de Bogota, who were in 9th place who had to win to make the tournament.  It was a beautiful night and a big game.

We had decided to go but at the last minute texted with our landlord who it turned out was also going, along with our neighbor. They came by to give us a ride and we didn’t know until it happened, but through connections (“palanca”) drove us right through the army, police, riot police, and barriers to park right in the stadium, and we to got to go in through the same door the players use from the bus to the locker rooms.  

And after arriving in stye, the game was awesome.   Tied, then the other team went ahead then tied again, then an amazing goal got called back, then tied from behind again late in the game, and a go-ahead goal with only a few minutes left. The amazing striker Miguel Morillo had 3 goals, and the team captain Andres Perez had the winning goal.  Cali won 4-3.  Amazing, on the front page of the paper and everyone talking about it for days.  ( watch all the goals here ) 

As visitors from another land the thing that impressed us was the singing and dancing of the Hincha, the fans, who take up the whole southern end of the stadium. Singing and dancing for over 2 hours, it was fun to watch from a distance, but is reportedly dangerous be any closer.  There are fences and police that separate the hincha from the “normal public” at all times.