Have I made you fall in love with the sunrise yet?
It was 8am when we finished our hike and had you asked any of us at the time we would have told you it was well into the afternoon.
Our driver guided our tired group into the car where we took a 40 minute drive to a Bali Coffee Plantation. Though I was tired and did end up taking a few snoozes, it was light out on our car ride so there was so much more to see. The roads were still bumpy but didn’t bother my stomach. I learned in the days of early Saturday practice in college that exercise is the greatest medicine. Niles and Ethan would disagree, though they both made it all the way back to our resort without getting sick. Driving in Bali is something that will never make my bucket list. The narrow 2 lane streets have bumps that require cars to come to a complete stop every so often and steep hills that I still am not sure how trucks make it up. It is definitely a place that “anything goes” as long as you stay on the left side of the road (most of the time). Luckily Ardi was a safe, reliable driver and we were in a nice car.
We finally arrived at the coffee plantation where we were greeted with another guide. He informed us that this was just a small version of what their plantation is and the real plantation is up in the mountains. We walked through the neat paths and saw Arabica trees, Robusta trees, snakeskin fruit trees, vanilla beans, cacao trees, guava trees, a cinnamon tree, and a few others along the way.
Coffee beans in various stages as well as dried ginger and vanilla beans on the right.
He went through the different levels of the coffee harvesting process and showed us an example of how they roast their coffee beans. However there is one process that is done by a very special member of their team – the Luwak also known as a Cevit. This is an animal that our guide described as the body of a cat, face of a bat, and tail of a monkey. For those of you who may not be familiar with Luwak Coffee, let me explain. The cevit (called luwak in Indonesia) is known to eat arabica beans though it is very picky in its choosing. It is said that they know to eat only the best of the beans. The coffee beans then travel through the luwak in ways that I will not describe and, for nicer terms, comes out the other end. The luwak poo is then thoroughly washed through many processes with boiling water to sterilize it. Then it goes through the roasting process and in the end produces the most expensive coffee in the world! In basic terms, this cat-like animal eats coffee beans, does the doo, beans are cleaned and roasted, and we humans drink the stuff.
Roasting some coffee beans over a fire
This is one of those times where I stop and think to myself, who was the first human who drank this coffee and what went through their head that said “mmm I’d like to drink that luwaks s***”. Ok enough with the potty mouth (although our guide did use that word to describe the luwaks product.
After the steps of how they produce their coffee were explain to us, we were seated in a wooden hut with a beautiful view. Side note, one of the best parts of Bali is how all the structures are open air and just make you feel like you’re a part of the nature. We were presented with a tasting of 7 warm beverages.
From left to right: Ginger Tea (deliciously spicy), Lemongrass Tea (crowd pleaser), Coconut Coffee (my absolute favorite), Ginseng Coffee (interesting flavor), Mocha (hot chocolate/coffee),Hot Chocolate (perfect for après ski), traditional Bali coffee.
Our tired crew, excited to try some good warm drinks
And since we were in Bali we found it necessary to have a cup of the traditional Luwak Coffee! We had it black first before (in Asia fashion) added some condensed milk to it. It was very smooth coffee and we all enjoyed it, though I don’t think I’d go spending a fortune on it in the US!
Cup of Luwak Coffee - doesn't look much different than regular
During our tasting our guide climbed up a tree and brought us a freshly picked guava. And once I bought my bag of coconut coffee to go (seriously the best stuff in the world) we ate some snakeskin fruit and terong belanda also called the love fruit. I’ll explain more of the snakeskin fruit in my food Friday post this week but the terong belanda doesn’t need much explaining. This fruit is a cross between a kiwi and a tomato. It’s called a love fruit because its sweet but sour…just like love? While I didn’t enjoy the fruit very much, I think Niles and Ethan loathed the tomato flavor even more.
Fresh picked guava
Once we tasted the love fruit we jumped back into the van and Ardi took us back to our resort. We arrived by 2pm and were all completely exhausted. We somehow managed to get ourselves onto the lounge chairs at the beach where we all took turns dozing in and out of sleep.
After tasting our wonderful coffee, hot chocolate, and tea Wish the picture did the view justice
Once again this was an amazing tour and I HIGHLY suggest it to anyone traveling to Bali. The trek was incredible and nothing beats a warm cup of authentic coffee!
We used http://www.balitrekkingtour.com/ and did the Mount Batur Sunrise trek. Thank you Bali Trekking Tour for giving us an absolutely incredible tour!
No comments:
Post a Comment