La Azotea Centro Cultural Tour
03 July 2014 | Antigua, Guatemala
Susan / mostly cloudy, showers, 74 degrees F
Guatemala is one of the great coffee producing countries; 8th in the world in terms of production volume, yet most importantly 3rd in quality. There are six specific regions where coffee is grown here; the Antigua area is one of them. Today we combine our Spanish lessons with a visit to La Azotea Centrol Cultural, one of the nearby coffee plantations. This site is also the home of the Mayan museum of musical instruments. To get there we ride a local bus; Q. 2 per person. I have to say the local buses here, while less interestingly painted and decorated, are much better maintained and cleaner than the ones in Panama. The grounds at the entrance of La Azotea are beautiful; lush, tall trees, flowering shrubs and climbing branches, and a great number of flowers and plants.
The Mayan museum of musical instruments is quite interesting; separated into a pre- and post- colonial areas. Our guide is knowledgable and demonstrates most instrument types after telling us about them (all in Spanish, of course). We watch a short video that shows have a dozen or so culturally significant dances & processions where these instruments are played. The dancers are all men swaddled in multi-layered brightly colored and lavishly embroidered costumes topped with a giant headdress and mask, which is a representation of the head of a bird or animal, or occasionally a person.
The coffee tour is equally informative yet filled with more practical information since coffee is part of our daily routine. This finca (farm) de cafe’ grows and tends its coffee plants under tall shade trees in the valley and on a nearby volcano. They do not use any chemicals on the plants or fields. There is only one harvest each year (November / December) during which time Mayan women hand pick the ripe berries. The bean is separated from the berry then dried outside for at least two months. The beans are roasted in small batches and vacuum-packed while still warm. Each coffee tree yields just one lb. of roasted coffee. No wonder it’s so expensive; that’s a lot of work per lb! We visit the plant nursery, a field of 2-year plants and then one of mature plants covered with green berries. In the roasting house we taste their three types of roasted beans. And at the end of the tour we’re treated to a small cup of freshly brewed coffee. It is quite good so the gift shop received a good amount of our Q’s for the purchase of a few Thank You gifts for our specialty coffee loving friends and hosts.