After safely landing in Lima and spending the night there, I arranged some practicalities (phone number, bus ticket to Jaèn, ..) and still had some time to get a glimpse of the city. With around as many habitants as the whole Belgian population, Peru’s capital is big and busy. Also, there don’t seem to apply alot of rules to Peruvian traffic, the only golden rule is “Honk to let others know that you’re coming”.
After arriving in Jaèn, with only 4 hours of delay – which apparently is the ‘standard’ delay – I was very warmly welcomed by Lenin and Stalin (seriously) who both work at the cooperativa Sol y Café. After a small problem that needed to be fixed by Gerardo, the owner of Sol y Café, my room at ‘la casa de voluntarios’ was finally ready and I couldn’t wait for this adventure to start!
Thursday, I got the chance to meet everybody at Sol y Café and understand what happens to the coffee that enters the cooperativa before it is sold. Also, I was happily surprised to find the 22 humidity sensors in a fairly good condition. In the evening Charlotte, Alessandro, Alden and Simon had arrived at ‘La casa’ from Chirinos, so we had our first dinner with the complete Humasol team 🙂
Flavour wheel for a coffeetaster or ‘catador’
The rest of the week I updated the software of 10 of those 22 sensors, we bathed in the gorgeous waterfall of Gocta (of which the ranking as one of the highest waterfalls is heavily disputed) and had a relaxed sunday afternoon at the local swimming pool ‘La Cascarada’.
Feeling like MacGyver while updating the software of a humidity sensor
Gocta waterfall
LESSON OF THE WEEK n°1: the general mindset here is ‘no te preocupes’ and coffee has alot more flavours than one can imagine.