We had another fabulous opportunity to see a piece of Costa Rica that’s not available to any other tourists through our good friend Eduardo. He still keeps in close contact with his old neighbours in the little pueblo he grew up in near the town of Plancillo. They have a finca (or farm) with an old-fashioned, yet still working sugar cane processing set-up that he used to work at while he was a kid.
They graciously invited us to come and spend the day to watch the whole process and we happily accepted. Along with our family (including the in-laws, here visiting for a month), we were joined by the GonzosInCostaRica clan, and Ginger and her 3 daughters. They are also from Texas and have recently moved to Atenas permanently and Casey is in the same grade as Rachel and Gabbi.
To get there took us about 45 minutes and we got to travel on the best and the worst of Costa Rican roads. We started on the newly opened super-highway that goes from San Jose to the Pacific coast, and ended up on a dirt road to the farm where we had to put the car in 4-wheel drive and even cross a couple of small creeks.
The sugar cane processing starts with an ox-driven wheel turning a large grinding wheel. The long stalks of cane are cut up into small pieces (by hand with a machete) and fed into the grinder. The spent and squished cane fibre is pilled up and left to dry. It will be used in the fires later. The raw “jugo de cana”, or sugar cane juice, runs through an underground pipe to one of 2 huge metal cooking pots that sort of resemble a huge wok.
These 2 pots are placed on top of a very cool brick oven system that is built right into the ground. Somehow (convection?) the smoke is all drawn out of a large chimney and there is almost no smoke inside the building.
So, after passing through a rough strainer into the first pot, the juice starts to be warmed up to evaporate all of the water out of it, however it is still very cloudy with debris. Thus the next step is to find the bark of a tree that grows on the farm (whose name escapes me now) and strip it and put it into a pail of water. The sap of this particular tree is very thick and gooey like molasses. They mush it around in the pail of water and then remove the bark. Once that is done, they pour some of the sappy mixture into the cane juice and it helps separate out the debris which will rise to the top. Pretty cool.
It doesn’t take long to see a thick froth form on top. Then they take what looks like a huge spoon and start to skim the debris off the top into another strainer. The resulting sludge is used as a highly nutritious animal feed. As you are starting to see, nothing goes to waste. The now much-clearer juice is left to evaporate out the water. Eduardo tells me that if you were to put a glass bowl over the big pots to catch the escaping steam, you’d get almost pure water.
The reason there are 2 pots is a little unclear to me, however I did hear somebody say that it is simply to split the liquid into more manageable volumes. I’m guessing having more surface area to allow evaporation must help as well.
While we are waiting for the liquid to be ready for the next step, Eduardo comes in with an 8 foot long length of banana tree trunk and proceeds to separate off some outer layers. We had no idea why he was doing this, but eventually found out he was making some natural vessels to hold some of the hot liquid and keep it in liquid form while they were doing other things. I don’t know if the banana tree helps maintain the heat or what, but it certainly was fascinating to see them once again make use of their natural surroundings. I called these “Banana Boats”.
So now the liquid is ready and they take their huge spoon and fill up the banana boats first and put them aside. Then 2 people bring out what looks like a dug out canoe (and in fact they call it “canoa” in Spanish). They start spooning liquid into it and using a huge paddle to stir it around. Then when it’s just the right consistency, they scoop it out with a little pot, and using wooden utensils, they spoon it into conical little moulds cut into a large thick wooden plank.
They harden quickly and then they turn the whole thing upside down to get them out. The resulting little blocks of cane sugar are called “tapas” that are used either for cooking or they will break a small piece to put in their coffee, sort of like a sugar cube.
Finally, they stack 4 tapas end-to-end and tie them into bundles using the sugar cane leaves. They go into the crop earlier in the year and pick the leaves off before the windy season starts and shreds them. One of the videos below show them tying up a bundle.
The process we witnessed took about 4-5 hours for 2 people (but they had a bit of help from Eduardo as well), and produced around 90 tapas. They tell us that they will sell them for around 400 colones per tapa (which is less than a dollar), or around $70 dollars Canadian for the day’s work.
Now, back to the banana boats. Once they were done with the tapas moulds, they went back to the liquid banana boats and poured then into the bottom of the “canoa”. To this they added peanuts, condensed milk powder and butter, and stirred it up until it hardened into a type of sugar cane “brittle”, sort of like peanut brittle, but sweeter. Each of the families got a big “block” to take home. It was quite hard, and a bit too sweet for my tastes, but the experience was unforgettable.
The grinding wheel and the catch basin.
Pipe into the initial filter & the cooking pots.
The oven.
To Rachel’s right, you can see the “canoa” and the tapas moulds.
Ray and Lu get to taste some of the sweet foam that is produced as part of the evaporation.
Here you can see them stoking the fire with the old crushed sugar cane stalks, and the big pot in all of it’s steaming glory.
The Ox wheel proved to be a great toy for the kids to play on.
The Ox gets a sugar cane break.
Stirring the “canoa”.
The banana boats.
Filling the moulds.
The Tapas – done.
A bundle of 4 tapas tied up, ready for market.
