Since its low season, I was the only guest from the hotel and the farm sent this 9 person van as my private transport. Its purpose for the day is to transport me from the hotel to the Butterfly Farm and then to Cafe Britt and back. I feel really spoiled by my private chauffeur - Julio.
Finca de Mariposas is the original Butterfly farm in Costa Rica that started exporting butterflies around the world. I had a white shirt on and as soon as I stepped into the farm, I was swarmed by groups of butterflies fluttering and chasing each other. Several landed on me. One of the girls in the tour offered to take a picture, by the time I gave her my camera, only a few linger.
They were beautiful and the tour was very informative about the cycle of life of the butterfly and all the different plants different species liked to lay their eggs.
There were fruit bars set up in the farm, its purpose is to allow the butterflies to get 'drunk' on it so that it would stay at one place longer to allow observations; otherwise the butterflies would flutter from flower to flower. At a distance, the butterflies at the 'Fruit Bar' looked like fish heads displayed at a fishmonger' stall.
The difference between a butterfly and a moth is that when a butterfly land, their wings fold up; their wings only open when they are flying whereas a moth will land with its wings open.
We were also shown the lab where catapillars that have been cocoon and emerged as a butterfly.
After the Butterfly Farm, it was another 30 minutes through the very bumpy roads to Cafe Britt. Cafe Britt's coffee farm tour is well run and also provided lunch.
Back in the old days, Costa Rica locals used ox carts to take the best coffee to the coasts port to export their coffee. Journey takes about 5 weeks.
The best coffees were sent out of the country and the local use the 2nd best and since its flavor was not the best, they add tons of sugar in their coffee to hide the bitter taste. Coffee grown from soil around the volcanoes and the highlands taste distinctly different. Costa Rica is one of the countries that have such a variance in temperatures.
The seeds are placed under banana leaves until its shoots come out..
Once the plants are about 1 foot high, it is then planted to the ground and each plant will cycle about 25 years.
June is the start ofCosta Rica's wet season, and the flowers for the coffee plants are gone and the green beans have formed.
The farm also grow Cocoa; here's a picture of the plant and the size of Cocoa once its ready to be picked
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Cafe Britt was very organized. Unfortunately, there weren't as many interesting things to photograph as the Butterfly farm.
1 comment:
Nice photos, thanks.
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