(above friends from my trip around Brazil and Carmoscoffee
It might surprise you to know I don’t particularly like flying - it’s not particularly a fear as in I’m terrified more a general dislike of all the faffing around with it - arriving hours early so you have time to get through the ludicrously draconian security checks - they even had me removing my boots at Frankfurt airport. So travelling to Brazil, with three separate planes - Manchester to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Rio De Janeiro and finally Rio to Belo Horizonte - was a real trial.
While we were in Brazil the schedule was Busy, this was the route we took starting at Belo and finishing at it - long drives in the minibus and the longest we stayed in one location was two nights! And we had to tour the coffee plantations in between - it was slow going on the rough dirt roads of the plantations where even tractors and harvesters struggled to drive.
And the return journey was even worse - because it started Thursday afternoon with a 5 hour minibus trip from Sao Lourenco to Belo Horizonte. Quick stay in a hotel and up at 6am to get ready for a 7am taxi. I arrived at the airport extra early because other people from my group had a 9.25am flight. So hang around the airport until my 11am flight, arrive Rio at midday. And then I had until 10pm to wait for my flight!
I could have taken a trip into Rio during that time - but someone on our trip had spent a few days there before the trip started and said it was terrifying with armed gangs robbing people on the street. That’s off putting when I would have to drag all my luggage around with me, so I decided to have food in the airport and sit out the wait as I had WiFi and my laptop.
From my 10 days in Brazil I have learned they like to eat a lot of rice and beans, beef and pork, and salads. It’s not a wildy different diet from the UK, and they like to BBQ a lot which they can because most of the year they don’t have to worry about rain. So after a week of traditional Brazilian food the TFI Friday’s looked appealing - and as I was facing a language barrier having a menu to point at made ordering so much easier.
I managed to drag that out for an hour and a half, but I could not sit in there until my flight so I moved location to....I’m ashamed to say Starbucks. But they had a lovely quiet seating area set to one side with tables perfect for using a laptop - so I ordered a large Americano so I could sit there - it was quiet because you can’t sit without ordering something. Anyway to my surprise the coffee was really good, far better then Starbucks UK offering. I suppose being in the land of coffee growing gives then access to a wide range of fantastic local grown coffee, in fact CarmoCoffees we visited in Sao Lourenco supplied their coffee to Starbucks. In the end I had three of those large black Americanos - and that filled in my time perfectly until I could check my luggage in and prepare for my flight.
Rio to Frankfurt is a 10 hour flight - it’s a massive plane compared to the short haul flights I have done before, and in economy class (it was an expensive trip without the flights!) the seats went 3 at one side, 4 in the middle, 3 at the other side. And they were narrow - I’m not exactly big but being in the middle of a 3 row I had to spend the whole flight with my arms tucked in.
Thanks to time zones I finally arrived at Frankfurt at 2pm Saturday- and to get to my connecting flight of course they had another security check point. I just got off a 10 hour flight through Rio - and walked through a totally secure part of the airport - so what new things could I have to check that Rio security did not find? Anyway they of course wanted me to take my boots off - which I have been wearing since 6am Friday - the security guard kept his distance carrying them to the x-ray!
After all that hassle I reached my gate (after a bus ride to it) with an hour before my flight would board. 20 minutes before boarding they change gates, from 30 where I was at to 47 - not even close! After heading to the new gate more news, the flight is delayed and we will now not leave until 6pm - we were supposed to leave at 4.50pm. More waiting around extending the extremely long journey.
Finally we board that flight, and manage to make Manchester for 7pm (two hour flight but UK is one hour behind Frankfurt) collect my bag and make my way to the car park to drive the 45 minutes back home.
That’s a long trip by anybody’s standards, and we were busy in Brazil the map above shows all the locations we stopped at while travelling around the coffee plantations - the most we spent at any location was two nights - so in reality it’s been 10 days of travelling start to finish.
It’s been worth it, meeting some amazing coffee farmers and seeing how they are improving crop cup scores year on year by using new techniques to dry the coffee cherries after they harvest them. And the hospitality from every farm owner is exceptional, we were not only welcomed but treated like royalty - and that is totally because they appreciate coffee consumers from around the world taking time to come and visit them - we felt honoured they welcomed us into their homes - but equally they were so appreciative of how far we had traveled just to learn the story of their farm. It is truly incredible how far the journey stretches for a seedling coffee plant, to the bean roasted by someone like me - and then consumed in the market. Coffee touches peoples lives in different ways, we need to stop for one moment and think about the people at the very start of the long chain - who get so little for their crop, if you have the option to pay a little more for a Speciality Coffee it is very well worth doing - these farmers and plantations are working hard to improve the taste of coffee you receive - a few pence/cents more a cup has to be worth it.
Thank you to everyone who has commented on my trip posts and shared my journey, I have tons more photos to share which I will spread over many more posts.
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