Coffee Adventures in Chiapas, Mexico
To watch Bruno Giesemann talk about coffee is to see a man glow. Bruno’s family has been in the coffee business on the same plantation at the very southern end of Chiapas, Mexico for four generations, and his passion for good coffee seeps from the corners of his smile as he walks through the Argovia Finca Resort and shows his guests around the finca. He greets the harvesters — many of whose families have been working the finca as many generations as Bruno’s family — with a wide grin.
Bruno created the Ruta del Café just outside of Tapachula for coffee afficionados, nature and bird lovers, adventure seekers, and travelers who want to connect to all of the people and work behind their morning cup o’ joe. But he has also established the tourism component of his business with the objective of paying his harvesters increasingly better wages regardless of the market fluctuations in the price of coffee. After a tour of the coffee bean production facility, the four wet mills and one dry mill used to process and sort out the best coffee beans, try harvesting with his local team, or head deeper into the jungle and the greenhouses at Argovia. The finca also grows exotic native flowers, including the “shampoo ginger,” a fist-sized flower you can wrap your hands around for sweet, soapy water.
At the beginning and end of the day, the open-air dining area has Argovia’s coffee and delicious and elegant local food. If you are a serious coffee drinker, there really is nothing like standing on the earth where you morning coffee grows and connecting with each of the flavors in the brew; in Chiapas, the characteristic taste is distinctly chocolatey. Much of the food that compliments the coffee comes from the new organic garden maintained by devoted gardens in the WWOOFer network (Willing Workers On Organic Farms.)
Basing out of Argovia, you can travel from finca-to-finca either by foot, with a local caballero on horseback, or on a mountain bike. The cowboys can tell you all about the medicinal uses of all of the plants in the shaded jungle. All of the coffee on the Ruta del Café is organic and shade grown, and you can munch on the coffee fruit as you travel beneath the diverse forest canopy.
Work off a big breakfast by walking up to the El Mirador viewpoint, spend some time working in the garden, then grab a horse and a guide to head over to the next hillside and another finca. On the way back, there is a great local swimming hole under the bridge at Argovia.
Bruno’s energy and open-mindedness pervades the property at Argovia, and this is an active way to learn about and engage in the history and production of coffee.