BANEXPORT, field news (#1) from the coffee prospectors Cauca, Colombia …
Monday, 1 de June de 2009 por Administrator
by Thomas Oberthur.
Prospecting, also known as fossicking (beautiful word isn’t it, supposedly from the Cornish language …) in Cornwall and Australia, is physical labor, involving traversing (traditionally on foot or on horseback), panning, sifting and outcrop investigation, looking for signs of mineralization. This is not my definition, but that of Wikipedia, the almost holy grail of fast wisdom seekers. Yet it seems a wonderful analogy to what we at BANEXPORT set out to do. Prospecting and exploring a terrain for the purpose of discovery of great coffee, and getting to know the people behind those great coffees! Sure, when we recently travelled to a beautiful region of Cauca called Inza, we admittedly did that not so much on horseback but on four-wheels, and buses. There was just the occasional horse along the road side.
Picture 1, The magical Paramo landscape around volcano Purace
Still physical labor it was! Driving for hours and hours over rough roads can be exhausting, yet the utter beauty of the regions natural bounty keeps the senses alert. We traveled from Popayan via Totorot and the village of Gabriel Lopez, crossing over the Paramo (see picture) into the amazing valley of Inza. BANEXPORT has a history of several years of successful work in a nearby area called “Tierradentro” and the region was known to us. Still, even after many times traversing this land we remain amazed by its breathtaking natural purity. And we were excited, a well known association of coffee producers had invited us several times to visit them, and finally the journey became reality. While I have been a friend of several growers for a while BANEXPORT had not worked with the group commercially.
