This morning we headed to Fernando's for breakfast, and for some of his legendary coffee. The coffee was certainly delicious, but the winning ingredient was the fried plantains that came with our "tipico" breakfast. The tipico breakfast literally means "typical breakfast," and is made up of scrambled eggs, refried black beans and tortillas. After a few days in Guatemala, it has started to grow on all of us.

At 8:30 we got on the road to Santa Anita, a coffee cooperative with whom we will be spending the next two days. Santa Anita was formed by a group of ex-guerilla fighters after the civil war in Guatemala ended in 1996. They received land from the government and decided to form a coffee cooperative of over 30 families. After speaking with Anacafe, we were definitely interested to hear about the industry from the point of view of smallholder farmers.

The road trip to Santa Anita took about 3 hours, with the requisite stops by roadside fruit stands to sample fruits we'd never seen or heard of before (gumfruit, anyone?), and at a gas station for popsicles. The roads in Guatemala are impressively well maintained, although there were certainly some hair-raising passing incidents during the drive!

It was just about lunch time when we arrived in Santa Anita. The co-op has a fairly rustic, small town atmosphere, with cinderblock houses and hammocks under the trees. We all stayed in the "Casa Grande" which used to be the house of the owner of the land around Santa Anita, before the co-op got the land grant from the government. To abide by Guatemala's fairly conservative culture, and to facilitate clothes changing in large groups, we were split into 4 rooms, girls and boys separate. The rooms had bunkbeds, which made some of us reminisce fondly about summer camp.

Lunch was a hearty chicken soup with lots of fresh tortillas (yum), and afterwards we headed out to tour the Santa Anita property. We hiked along a huge canyon that was green and lush, and amazingly beautiful, and finally ended up at a 30-foot waterfall that crashed down from the rocks above. A few people were brave enough to jump in the water, but most just stood back and admired the view. It was a pretty amazing spot for our first experience in the Guatemalan woods!

On the way back to the center of town, we passed by the co-op's wet mill, which is where they take coffee cherries and extract the coffee bean. This is a complicated process which requires a lot of water and specific machinery. Once the beans are extracted, they sit in fermentation tanks for 18-24 hours and then must be removed promptly or risk spoilage. Usually there are only a few people within a coffee farming community who have the skill to manage the fermentation process, because it is quite complicated.

Back at the Casa Grande, we partook of the "rustic" (i.e. not very warm) showers and had a delicious dinner. After dinner, we met with the leader of the co-op, Rigoberto, who also used to be the leader of the guerillas during the war. Rigoberto only spoke Spanish, but his talk was mesmerizing to all of us. Amanda translated as he described his life as a guerilla, the decision to start Santa Anita, and his hopes and dreams for his family and all the families in the co-op. It seems as though most of the co-op families are trying to educate their children as much as possible so that they will have more opportunities in life. Coffee farming doesn't seem like easy work, so it's not hard to see why parents would want better for their children.