Llano Bonito

Living in the Kingdom of Mountains & Coffee

A Mountain Town

Last Sunday, I woke up early and groggy in San José to catch a bus. My destination was the tiny mountain town of Llano Bonito.

Getting off the second bus, I felt overwhelmingly like a foreigner — my black suitcase was overstuffed: rolled up clothes, yellow-plastic GPS, a little trowel, scattered books and playing cards (just in case). I felt like a foreigner because, as the bus sloshed away, I realized too late that I had gotten off at the wrong stop. Having no other choice, I started trudging up the mountain (I promise, that’s not an exaggeration) towards my host family’s house. Gracias a Dios, I had only walked a kilometer or two when a car cut through the rain to my rescue; my host brother at the wheel, and I got in, apologizing for trekking mud and water into the backseat.

I’m happy to say things have looked up since that first afternoon, and I have gotten to know the breathtaking beauty of my rural homestay. In Spanish, Llano Bonito roughly means “flat, grassy plain” which I have concluded, must be a wry joke. The town, which has a population of about 3,000, is nestled at the top of a green peak, on either side of which is a few-hundred foot drop into valleys below.

The steepness of the mountains is impossible to capture in a photo. But you feel it everywhere you go. Walking about a half-mile in either direction is enough to go about 300 feet up or down in elevation.

Craggy mountains fill the horizon in every direction, and become the set for the daily weather, which is magnificent and predictable. Mornings are bright and hot — the sun throws deep shadows into the valleys and outlines the cypress trees with warm halos. But as lunch approaches, lazy white clouds fall into the green crevices and fill with dark rain, which falls every day in the afternoon. Some evenings, the clouds dissolve as the sun slips behind the jagged horizon. But mostly, the clouds grow unimaginably large until they completely envelope the town and looking out the windows becomes looking into white walls.

And that’s the best way I can describe this place. The town 1 bar, 2 churches, 2 little schools, a spindly pink general store, and a pulperia (corner market) tucked in there as well. And after doing research each day, there’s a lot of time to do nothing.

A Coffee Land

The tri-cantón region around Llano Bonito, called Los Santos, is dotted with hundreds of coffee farms and micro-beneficios, or small-scale processing mills. My project focuses on finding the highest-quality coffee in the region, and trying to see what kinds of factors make the coffee so excellent. I have quickly discovered that these micro-beneficios are going to prove helpful and telling for my research. Conducting interviews in Spanish with the owners of these small mills this past week has been taxing, but rewarding.

Coffee cherries from one farm in the area. Overall, this lot’s coffee is healthy, but its owner is dealing with a small insect infestation, which you can see the effects of in the forward-most beans.

A lot of them seem to be excited about my project, and one couple that owns a micro-mill was animated enough to brew up some of their coffee right after I interviewed them. They are experimenting with what’s called “natural-process” coffee, meaning they leave the cherry part of the bean on as it dries in the sun, making the final beverage taste like strawberries and smell like sweet, summer blossoms.

While a lot of my project centers on conducting interviews, the other half of involves dirty fingernails, ducking under coffee branches, and using that hand-trowel from my suitcase — collecting soil samples. With each sample, I also get information on altitutde, one of the most important factors for coffee quality. My plan is to send these muestras of soil to the University of Costa Rica’s lab to find out different factors like acidity and chemical concentrations of calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

Soil captured for analysis. The bags need to be kept cool, so I’m currently using my host family’s refrigerator but will soon need more space…

Most farmers want to know more about their soil, so they don’t mind me taking some as long as I send the lab results to them.

I’m excited to get to know the area more and interview more farms in the coming weeks. I have already learned so much and found my experience in this new, rural environment to be challenging but fulfilling.

Thanks for reading, and please come back soon for more updates on my project and experience.