•• Swork Travelogue: Guatelmala ••

We packed and headed out towards the Pastores mill, nestled in the hills just outside of the colonial city of Antigua. The most impressive and moving experience I had was seeing the coffee ready for export. We walked through the enormous room, following a path carved out by bags of green coffee imposingly stacked to the ceiling a hundred feet above us. All of the coffee in that room came from a relatively small growing region and all from only one of its many hills. The workers used no pallets or forklifts: they simply used a ladder and passed the 150lb bags to each other, stacking them in a criss-cross pattern, creating a monumental canyon of plump burlap sacks. The dry, hay-like smell of the coffee, dust, and burlap barely drowned out the nearly fetid sweetness from the mounds of composting pulp 4, piled across a busy road a few hundred yards away near the concrete drying patios, washing channels and de-pulping machines.

We ducked under a large, whitewashed wooden beam, up a narrow plywood ramp and entered a room filled with 20 or 30 women intensely and carefully scrutinizing beans one by one. When we entered the room they looked at us a quizzically, as if to say, "Who are these gringos?" but like almost everyone I encountered in Guatemala, they smiled, laughed and returned to the meticulous task of hand-sorting the green coffee to make the final inspection for defects.

We began our day with a five hour-long journey to Lake Atitlan. Once there, we stayed in Panajachel and visited some of the smaller family and community owned farms across the lake.

The exploratory group of us piled into a small boat destined for an isolated area covered in bamboo and coffee farms where the people were warm and welcoming. We met with owners and farmers and observed their grass roots approach to running a large coffee mill 5. On these smaller farms, where all the picking and sorting is done by hand, I couldn't help noticing the enjoyment of the workers and their enthusiasm for bean picking. This was our last day in Guatemala, so we spent the evening in celebration.

We packed up in the early morning and headed for the airport, armed with the knowledge to pick the best possible beans straight from the small communities whom we had the incredible opportunity to meet personally. Adios Guatemala.