Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 35

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 35

Mexico 

2/5/09 – Costa Esmeralda - Tour Of Vanilla Farm

The woman who runs this RV Park, also has a relative who owns a vanilla farm nearby.  She offers to take us on a tour of the working vanilla farm, which involves growing, packaging and distributing vanilla.  To get there, we back-track through Costa Esmeralda, then through the town of Gutierez Zamora. Even Brutus without the trailer attached is almost too large for the lane-like streets.  We make it, barely.  A little past outskirts of the town is a dirt road and we follow it though some pretty thick jungle type areas and turn left.  Voila! There is the vanilla farm.  On the left side of the path is a pretty big pond. An alligator is noticeably sunning himself on the far shore.  I was glad it was on the far shore as there were no fences.  I take lots of pictures. 

Big Smile

The owner greets us and we walk on a path that leads up a small tree-covered hill. Although he indicates that he has given very few tours, he did a very good job. It turns out that we are all but surrounded by vanilla trees.  He shows us several growing on the hillside.  He revealed that he entered the business about fifteen years ago. The whole process, from growing to distribution is handled from this farm.   He gives us some of the wild oranges that grow on his land and the one I got was the juiciest, sweetest, messiest orange I have ever eaten.  They also had a tree that had thorns the size of a child’s finger on the property.  This is apparently an important tree to Mexico, but I don’t know why and I did not catch the name. When I find out, I will pass on the information. We were then shown the large, green-house looking structures and shown inside.  The pampered vanilla plants are kept in these ‘shadow houses’ to keep the sun from touching the vanilla pods.  The sun burns and ruins the pods. Few of the plants were flowering and my attempts to get pictures of them were unsuccessful.  Frown.

See - Right Here

Sharp!

Next we were shown the vanilla beans on the drying sheets, spread out both indoors and outdoors.  The workers make sure that only the right conditions touch the pods.  When a short, light rain fell, the workers scurried to get the pods inside the roofed sheds. We bought some of the pods, as well as several bottles of the vanilla.  As we were leaving, we passed a structure with a cement well inside.  It turns out that another, younger gator lives in this spacious water world.  The owner said that he saw this animal a few years earlier and talked the previous owner into selling the gator to him.  He originally had him in the pond with the other gator, but they did not get along and his ‘well’ was built.  He is now healthy and growing, but still ill-tempered.   Sam got a lot of pictures of this one.   

On the way back to the RV Park, we stopped and bought more oranges to squeeze into juice.  Good stuff!!! We also got directions to the nearest farmacia that would possibly have something to help Sam with his Fire Ant bites.  He got these in Pharr, just before we left (while messing with the water tanks) and the bites just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Sam recommends everyone avoid getting bit by those little bugs! He got several creams (one of which was for sun burn) and after he put some Listerine on the bites, we walked the tropical beach. Later we celebrated Connie’s birthday with a taco dinner, cooked and served by Connie and Dave. Then we started preparation for the next travel day to Anton Lizardo (just outside of Veracruz).  Not real warm, 75 degrees.  Gas price: $2.09

Vanilla Pods Drying