My friend Julie Laven who is here with me is blogging about our adventures. Thus far she is doing a much better job at writing about all we are doing, so you may want to check out her blog for some more details about what we are up to. You can check out her blog here.
Today we went to the little town of Jayaque. I had been there last year for a little bit for a celebration and march at the Lutheran church that is there. We went today mostly to see if we could find some coffee farms and learn more about coffee growing. I wanted to start investigating how I could potentially get coffee from farmers here in El Salvador to serve at a coffee shop I want to start back home in the suburbs. We looked in the El Salvador travel book for places that grow coffee and Jayaque seemed to be the best option because it said it had coffee tours and it was the closest of all the places in the book. It took us about an hour and a half to get there (with Cesar driving we got home in less than an hour). We stopped by a little museum and found the most wonderful tour guide, Henry. He is studying tourism at the national university and lives and works in the city of Jayaque. Henry showed us around the little museum and then took us to an old coffee plantation. We went up to the top of the mountain near the town and had some beautiful views! We had lunch at a nice restaurant that is also a coffee plantation. We stopped by an artist place that makes things out of used wood, metal, and cardboard. They had some pretty cool things in there. Then we stopped by a bakery and bought some cupcake things. Henry spent most of the morning and afternoon with us showing us around and explaining things to us. He was so knowledgeable and really understood the concept of tourism. If there are a few more people like Henry in El Salvador, tourism really has a chance to take off. There are so many cool places and things in El Salvador, but you really need someone like Henry who knows about the places and things to show you around.
It´s not coffee season, so nothing much was happening in the way of growing or harvesting coffee, but we did get to see some plantations and got a general idea of what the harvesting process is like. I still have SO much to learn about coffee and coffee growing, but I think I got a really good start today. And I think that Jayaque was the perfect place to go.
