My first full day in Costa Rica

I woke up at 5 to shower and leave to meet the tour bus. The family I'm staying with offered to drive me to meet the tour bus at a nearby hotel (they only pick up from hotels). We then spent a while going to various hotels to pick up others going on the tour throughout San Jose. It gave me a chance to see the city a bit. The tour is so amazingly global--I am the only one from USA and others were from Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Columbia, Canada, Switzerland, England, Poland, Germany...and I may be forgetting a few. The greatest number was from Mexico and it was a family traveling together--two elderly moms and their adult daughters I presume and one of them had a 7 month old baby girl. The baby had Down Syndrome and was very adorable and sweet and she had pierced ears. We then went to the Doka coffee plantation which is a fair trade company. Harvest was in the fall through January or February and we had breakfast there. Pinto Gallo is a famous breakfast dish here that reportedly Columbia and Costa Rica both claim they have the best (sort of like coffee). It was black beans and rice and possibly in Columbia it's made with red beans. We toured various stations to show up the steps in coffee processing from what the pickers do, to how they are paid, to how the beans are sorted, quality is checked and they are dried. The highest quality beans are the ones that sink to the bottom when put in water, and they get to be dried in the sun for I think he said 25 days. There are two different shells on the bean one that is taken off through fermentation and another after it's been dried I think. The second husks are used as fuel for the drying equipment that dries less quality beans. Here are some photos from the coffee tour. I will continue this day in the next post!