Costa Rica is known around the world for producing amazing coffee and many coffee lovers will travel to Costa Rica just to experience and drink this amazing beverage.

The entire country and culture is centered around coffee. We might even compare it to the love for tea expressed by the English, or the passion for spices in India. If you go to Costa Rica you might encounter a Tico inviting you to have a “cafecito” (black coffee) in the afternoon, which is the perfect excuse to gather with friends and family and talk about their day, tell jokes and have a moment of indulgence.

In every “Tico” house you will find rice, beans and coffee and I might even say that this is the rule rather than the exception. Some foreigners find this very amusing and even more amusing the fact that mothers give their babies some coffee in their bottles, so as you can see coffee has become one of the backbone of our everyday life and culture in Costa Rica! Costa Rica lives and breaths coffee! It is no coincidence that per capita consumption of this drink is the highest of all coffee-producing countries in the world.

Coffee is not just an everyday drink, it is considered a top notch quality beverage! The standard of Costa Rican coffee is so high it is not surprising to find the Mountain City of Santa Maria de Dota in Costa Rica to be listed as one of the World’s best cities for Coffee Lovers cited by the online newspaper, The Huffington Post.

The article has listed 11 different cities around the world to be the among the best cities for coffee lovers, but is not only the coffee quality that they consider, their criteria for this list looks at places that are not only “passionate about the brew but they’ve created a unique culture around it; and some of them have even invented their own distinct coffee blends. Because coffee is not just a jolt of caffeine, it’s an experience”. Some of the cities listed are the following: Istanbul (Turkey), Paris (France), Tel Aviv (Israel), Kailua-Kona (Hawaii, United States), Seattle (United States), Melbourne (Australia), Havana (Cuba), Lisbon (Portugal), Santa María (Costa Rica), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Rome (Italy).

The Huffington Post writes about how “Costa Ricans refer to coffee as their “golden bean” because it has paid such high dividends to the local economy”.

Santa Maria de Dota is considered as an authentic Costa Rican village, surrounded by lush coffee plantations and friendly people. This scenic little town is the perfect place if you want to relax and stretch you legs although for some it might be consider too sleepy because if you sit in the park you can even hear the coffee beans drying. There is a lot more to do in this scenic little town than just drink coffee. You can hike the mountain ranges and do some bird watching; you can find more than 200 species of birds including quetzals, tanagers, hummingbirds and woodpeckers in the beautiful surrounding areas.

Let’s take a quick trip to the past. It is said to believe that one of the first coffee growers in Cost Rica was a priest named Father Felix. In 1816, Father Felix started very small by planting some coffee beans in his backyard. Eventually he invited his neighbors to plant coffee as well and four years later they had their first export of coffee. And it was long when the leaders of the country had a vision and saw coffee production was a way to boost the economy of the country. With the great success of its exports, Costa Rica became the only country in the world which has issued an executive order banning the production of any variety of coffee other than Arabica.

The success of the coffee industry and the Costa Rican “golden bean” paved the way for a strong financial growth in the country. With the taxes and profit of the beans, the Federal Debt was paid – the postal service was founded, the first government printing office was build, hospitals and universities were financed , the National Theater was erected and the first railway to the Caribbean was laid.

Coffee not only transform the Costa Rican economy and its landscape, it also changed consumer behavior and working patterns. Developing a taste for coffee was perhaps, a reflection of the democratic society that was being forged. In the words of historians Peters and Samper, “Drinking coffee became a ritual of Costa Rican society, a society that was free of economic and social distinctions; everyone drank it, from the simplest farmer or laborer to the most prominent politician.”

The close relationship between coffee and daily life led Costa Ricans to plan their calendar around the harvesting, processing and sale of coffee, to such an extent that the Costa Rican tax year is based on the coffee trade (it begins in October and ends in September of the following year).

In your next visit when you sip a nice cup of coffee you will now understand why this energizing drink means so much to our friendly Ticos and why their daily life evolves around their “cafecito”. All coffee lovers that appreciate the quality, flavor and aroma of one of the best coffees in the world, should stop in Costa Rica.

We invite you to indulge in the many coffee shops you might find or go to Santa Maria de Dota and experience the local hospitality and the green surroundings of one of the best cities in the world for coffee lovers.

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