Today we arrived in Puerto Chiapas, Mexico and left to visit the Argovia Estate & Flower Plantation on our cruise tour. We were picked up in a small, 12 passenger mini van. This was nice transportation for the day’s activities to come. As we were traveling through the town, I noticed that we had a police escort. We stopped in town along the route for a bathroom break and then continued about our journey. The journey itself was quite interesting and I found many things to take photos of out the windows. As we began our climb up the Sierra Madre Mountains, we saw many examples of home-grown coffee bean operations. After about one and a half hours in total we arrived at the Argovia Plantation & Estate. The estate was beautiful and our guide there was extremely knowledgeable. Founded in 1880, Argovia is one the oldest coffee producers in the region.
Our guide began by explaining to us the coffee bean, the coffee plant etc… Again, he was very informed and knowledgeable. Afterwards we walked through the coffee production plant. We saw the cleaning operation, the large pits that beans are stored and washed in and the rather large drying area. We saw the sorting, packing and bagging equipment and then boarded a cart pulled by a tractor to visit the flower plantation.
The road to the flower plantation was bumpy bumpy bumpy (did I say bumpy). If you have a bad back, you may want to reconsider this tour. The flower plantation itself, amazing! Argovia specializes in growing more than 125 different ornamental flowers. We saw several greenhouses to this effect and many amazing plant species and varieties. Even amongst the many bumps this was totally worth it.
Before our departure we made our way back to the estate and were served a traditional Mexican lunch with tortilla soup and of course fresh coffee. All in all, a good relaxing day.
As we headed down the mountain and back onto the main road, I couldn’t help but notice the police escort had returned.