We’ve been back from Costa Rica for two weeks now, and with some time to reflect, we’d love to share some of our experiences.  Let’s start from the beginning, Phil and I went to Costa Rica with the intent of furthering our knowledge of Costa Rican coffees, meeting exporters and most importantly, meeting the producers and tasting their coffees.

Although Phil and I had previously visited coffee farms, we had never taken a trip with the intent of purchasing coffee at the country of origin.  So this was an exciting first for us!  We arrived late on Sunday night and we were picked up at the airport by the ever-animated, always on-the-run, Francisco Mena of Exclusive Coffees.  Exclusive is a Costa Rican coffee exporter that works “exclusively” with small producers – more to come on Exclusive Coffees and Francisco.  We had had a long trip so he took us to buy some tropical fruit and then straight to the hotel and to bed.