Coffeetime

As some of you may know, I love coffee but it does not love me.

A year ago, I had to give up my favourite hot beverage because it does terrible things to me; number one, being that it raises my heart rate to workout levels, even when I'm sitting down and relaxing. It sometimes gives me headaches and generally leaves me feeling jittery and without energy.

Not good.

When DW and I planned our trip to Costa Rica, we had coffee on our agenda. After all, it's one of the best producers of coffee.

I knew that I wouldn't be able to drink coffee the way I had, in the past, but I was hoping that I'd get to enjoy a cup or two during our travels. I'd limit myself to a small cup in one sitting, making sure to add milk and sugar, which seemed to lessen the effects of my caffeine reaction.

DW, on the other hand, was able to enjoy coffee every day.

I had my very first cup in Monteverde, at our hotel, I started each morning with a single, small cup of coffee. The coffee was excellent but that was no surprise, as this hotel was family owned and operated, and the son was a graduate of the Cordon Bleu cooking school, and all of the ingredients in their kitchen were of top quality. Their morning granola and their marmalade jam were homemade, and it stood to reason that they'd only have premium coffee.

As tempted as I was to have a second cup, I stuck to one.

Because we were on the move immediately after breakfast, I didn't notice an increase in my heart rate other than from the exertion I was already placing on my body. We had hiked through a cloud forest on the first morning and drove windy, narrow, and often steep dirt roads on our second morning, which raised my adrenaline anyway.

I had coffee with breakfast in Montezuma, but again we went straight from the café to a hike up Montezuma Falls, so my elevated heart rate was attributed to physical exertion.

That was my last cup of coffee for about a week, when I had breakfast at our lodge after having gone quetzal watching at sunrise. The coffee at the lodge wasn't great, and the cups were small, so I had two of them, even though I knew that we had more coffee on the day's agenda.

Around lunchtime, we paid a visit to the town of Santa María de Dota, in the mountainous region outside of the Quetzal National Park, about a 20-minute drive west of our lodge. This town is known for its coffee production, and as part of our last day in this region, I was going to have more coffee, dammit!

We drove straight to a co-op, Cafetería Coopedota, where they had beans from several coffee growers, all under one roof. Though they also offered food, DW, our friends, Kat and Jim, and I just wanted some coffee.

We were hoping that they'd have a sampler of different roasts from various roasters, much like you can order a flight of different beer at a brewery or like DW and I sampled various wines, in Gigondas, France, but that wasn't the case at Coopedota. They simply listed myriad ways in which you could order a cup of coffee.

I ordered a flavoured iced latte. I was given the choice of adding vanilla, caramel, or peppermint syrup, and I chose caramel. The drink came in a handled mason jar, with the three layers of beverage, which I stirred into a delicious, homogenous beverage.

Lovely.

We bought a couple of bags of beans, to give as gifts, and moved on.

We searched for a proper restaurant and found one, up in the hills to the east end of the town, that had excellent reviews on Google, and as an added bonus, it was also a coffee production facility.

Cafetería Don Cayito is right on a slope that overlooks Santa María de Dota and the mountains that surround it. We pulled up in front of a large shed that was taking what appeared to be washed beans and depositing them in a pile in this shaded area. The moment we stepped out of our vehicle, we smelled what almost seemed like some fermentation process was going on. There was a sourness to the air. A brownish liquid was also running from the mound and moving down a drain that ran under our vehicle.

A large open area also had beans of various shades of colour spread in rectangular piles on a concrete floor. A person was running a rake-like tool over the piles, turning the beans in a process that looked like he was drying them.

We went directly into the café part of the facility and found the inside hopping with business. People were sitting at tables, eating food and drinking various beverages. We noticed that doors led out onto a balcony and that's where we headed.

The view of Santa María, below, was amazing.

The large, whitish buildings to the right of the town are part of the co-op.

We ordered lunch and I was tempted to order more coffee, but I was starting to feel jittery from the large latte that I had at the co-op. I stuck to water. Even when we stayed for dessert, and DW had coffee with her passionfruit cheesecake, I stuck to water with my lemon pie.

We purchased more coffee, knowing something of their process, and also because the smell of coffee permeated the café and was intoxicating.

Leaving Don Cayito's, we decided to go in search of a waterfall that was supposedly just to the south of the town. We plugged the destination into the car and off we went.

The map had us climbing a steep hill in what seemed to be an affluent part of the town. The houses were large an pristine, and the road was perfectly paved.

But it was also extremely steep and winding. I had the RAV4 in first gear and would have my foot to the floor for a large part of it. I was firmly pushed back in my seat and could feel the adrenaline rush as we turned more and more tight hairpin curves, each one leading onto steeper sections of road. As we turned one curve, with my foot on the floor, the Toyota slowed right down and I could see the revs drop.

I was terrified that we were going to stall. We could have walked at a faster pace than the vehicle was moving. But it kept moving.

My ears popped. We were more than 2,000 metres up. There was nothing more that I could do with the vehicle except keep my foot to the floor and steer.

We reached the point where the GPS said the entrance to the falls were but we saw no signs of a trail or place to stop. We were still on a steep incline and I said that there was no way that I was going to stop the RAV4 here. We continued a few more minutes until we reached the top of the mountain, the road flattened out, and I could turn around.

My adrenaline, boosted by caffeine, was making my heart race. It was pumping at 124 bpm, according to my watch. My watch also measures my stress level, and it was maxed out.

"Screw the waterfalls," I said, "we're going back to the lodge."

Everyone agreed.

I kept the vehicle in first gear and rode the brakes all the way down to the heart of town. Heading back to our lodge, I discovered that we had to climb more hills to escape the valley where Santa María lies, but they weren't as challenging as the climb to the falls.

I love coffee but it doesn't love me. Back at our lodge, my heart was pounding in my chest and I couldn't steady my hands. I also had a headache. I needed to nap for a bit and when I woke up, I felt exhausted.

I was still full from the large lunch that I ate but still joined the others at the dinner table. We ordered a bottle of wine and that's all I had. With the bottle empty, I went straight to bed and had the lights out by 8:30.

Am I going to drink any of the coffee that we brought home from Costa Rica? Absolutely, but I'm only having one cup per week, and it'll be a half cup, at that. And I'm going to make sure that I'm active after having it.

The day after our quetzal and coffee adventures, DW and I said goodbye to Kat and Jim, who were heading back to the beaches, and we made our way to San Jose in what would be our final full day in Costa Rica.

I'll share my thoughts on Costa Rica's capital, later this week. Stay tuned.