Before we arrived at San Sebastian we made one more stop. This was at a small family run plantation that grows and roasts the beans used to make the elixir of life. Entering Cafe La Quinta Mary we were surrounded by coffee trees covered in green beans. We only saw a few ripe red ones but it is getting close to harvest season so many more will ripen in the next few weeks. The beans have a shell that is removed before processing, which I never knew, never having seen coffee before it was roasted. Interspersed with the coffee plants are sweet lime trees and avocado trees, which I have never seen before either. I read somewhere that avocados don’t ripen until picked so they can be harvested and sent to market as needed. Once they do ripen though it is time to eat them or get them into the frig as they won’t keep for long. We bought a bag of dark roast coffee to take home with us, and the car smelled divine for the rest of the trip.
Sweet limes 
Avocados
After leaving the coffee plantation we arrived at San Sebastian, which is an old mining town that had a population of 30,000 at one time and but is now less than 1,000. Gold and silver were mined here and then carried down an old route to Puerto Vallarta to be loaded on ships. A community grew up in PV with architecture and cobblestone roads patterned after San Sebastian, but unlike San Sebastian PV continues to thrive.
More to come about San Sebastian, our wonderful lunch, and our tour of a tequila distillery.
Wandering with Wendy 
On our first trip we went to Costa Rica and made the journey into the mountains to a coffee plantation. It was a great trip, and the coffee we brought back was a wonderful reminder of our adventure that day.
This post takes me back to that day! 🙂
It sounds like it was a great excursion!
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