La Finca en Minca

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This weekend was a 4-day weekend! It was actually the first time we’ve had a day off since we started school on August 18th. Needless to say-I was ready for a break! Originally we had thought about going to la Guajira peninsula to see flamingos. However, apparently, they are being eaten by sharks! Anyways, Elizabeth decided to go on a surf holiday and Dave and I went to Minca. Minca is a tiny little town up in the Sierra Nevadas de Santa Marta. Costeños go there for the cooler temperatures. The nearby town of Santa Marta is at least as hot as Barranquilla, and it is amazing to go from temperatures in the 90’s down to the 70’s in just a half hour. The road itself is pretty bad and busses don’t make the run up to Minca so Dave and I arrived in moto-taxi. I actually hadn’t been on a motorcycle before, so I was a little weary of the idea at first. But I have to admit that it was pretty cool to be on a motorcycle heading up into the mountains of Colombia. Every minute the air was cooler, and there were more and more trees!
We stayed at a finca, or farm, called Sans Souci. The German owner offers a discount if you do some work. We agreed to do some work and were offered the job of grinding coffee! The dried coffee beans needed to be put through the grinder to remove the light-weight outer shell.

After going through the grinder, there was a bowl of the coffee beans and bits of the outer shell. In order to separate the two, you had to swirl the bowl around and blow. And I thought I’d be weeding or something!

It was very relaxing to be there. Where I live in Barranquilla there are a lot of new high-rise apartment buildings and construction. Sometimes I feel like there is just too much concrete in my life. It was nice to be surrounded by lots of trees and beautiful flowers. With lots of flora around, there was also lots of fauna…. I think I got more bug bites this weekend then I ever have before! The room we stayed in came equipped with mosquito bed nets, but no window screens, so by the end of the night we had visits from lots of moths, a couple geckos, 2 GIANT flying cockroaches and a bat!