There are few things in life more important to me than an amazing cup of coffee every. Single. Day. My morning coffee is the main reason I go to bed at night, it's what I look forward to every day in the morning and in the afternoon and like I say to my team: "it's the liquid of life." Water? That's a distant third to coffee and beer.
So, when we discovered the greatness of Panamanian coffee well...it helped seal the deal for the perfect spot we would live one day and build a place where we could share it with others. But, we had no idea just how much more we had to learn.
I first learned about the amazing life of coffee when traveling to Italy in my teens. In Italy, coffee is for all morning, all day, and all night and they are doing it right. Well, it was there that they served a team full of teenage athletes espresso after dinner every night. Needless to say, we had longer and higher energy nights...my apologies to the coaches for that!
Fast forward a few years to when I learned about the importance of shade grown, sun dried, fair trade, organic coffees from a friend who was a roaster in Colorado and then experienced it first hand on a trip to Costa Rica. The bar was set and a new found passion in life began.
As one of the most widely traded commodities in the world, coffee is tied to the exploitation of workers and environmental degradation of this beautiful planet. When done responsibly, it empowers families, their farms, and the communities that surround them.
And by the way, tastes a LOT better too!
After living on my friend Mels coffee for over 20 years, we moved to Panama and had to find a new source. We knew Panama had incredible coffee but finding the perfect fit took a bit of time. Remember the #2 of the great places of Panama? Near La Amistad National Park in the mountainous region of Panama is where you will find the best coffees of the world are grown.
Up in the mountains over 6,000 ft. is the beautiful Mount Totumas Eco Lodge and cloud forest where they sustainably grow and harvest their shade grown organic coffee as you see in this photo. About 6 years ago, I had heard about this place from our other guests who prioritized staying in other eco lodges like ours so I introduced myself via email and shortly after that, they came to stay and surf with us. A friendship, a dependency was born.
We are thankful every day to have made friends with them so we can share their coffee in our restaurant with our guests. Years ago when we were planning/dreaming about how we would use our land to provide food for our guests we naively thought we would be able to grow coffee too. Some things just really need to be handled by experts and the right climate. We are merely expert daily drinkers of coffee and our expertise ends there.
There's this place called "The Bean Belt" which is a band of tropical regions around the globe near the equator. You can picture the equator as the waist of the globe wearing a big fat belt and this is the where the treasured beans come from that fuel everyones morning brew. Panama is known in particular for having the world famous-award winning Geisha coffee bean. In the photo above the family of Mount Totumas is hand sorting their Geisha beans.
The Dietrich family hadn't originally planned on getting into the coffee business but found that they not only had the perfect location for shade grown, hand picked, organic arabica and geisha beans, but that growing it would also help them reforest and regenerate their lands from the damages caused by cattle. Their small self-sustainable plantation creates jobs, benefits, and pride in their land by their local people as well as a great vibe for their Eco lodge and adventure business.
As they learned and perfected their growing and roasting, they knew they had something special. While still clinging to their identity and passion of running a small, intimate business where everything is done by hand and their guests enjoy not only the coffee that fuels their day, but also the eco system around them, they entered their coffee into the famous "Best of Panama" coffee competition and...they WON! As you can see in their prideful eyes above, Jeffrey, Alma, and Karin, and their team that supports them won in the category of Geisha natural. Just goes to show ya - passion fuels success and they nailed it.
Thankfully for us we get to pass on this experience to our guests each morning. << Test First Name >>, you won't find this coffee in stores. You gotta know the right people (kinda like us ;)). So, if you love coffee, we'd love to serve it to you.
Join us any time but especially in January - the prime coffee harvest season, to experience a cup for yourself. We even have a wee bit extra for you to take home to gift to that special person caring for your plants and animals or, just stash it away for your Sunday morning coffee read with little ole me!
Your Friends in Morrillo,
Cari and Ryan Mackey
Owners and Hosts
Morrillo Beach Eco Resort
January is also a good month for baby sea turtle releases too! There's nothing better than a good cup of coffee in hand, and helping these little babies make their way to their long lives at sea.
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