Yuviaga Coffee Trails

Waking up every morning to the smell of coffee, surrounded by lush vegetation, animals, birds and millions of singing insects all playing the daily soundtrack. Knowing that new and uncharted trails lay just at your doorstep, is what keeps spirits high and full of life! Few places on earth make you feel completely detached from civilization like this. A lovely time capsule floating somewhere in the 60's where no wifi nor cell phones have a place.

This time the Bike Logistics team (Diego Sada, Mau de Avila and Samuel Zorrilla) embraced a new adventure, an epic journey that shaped their Lifestyle to a completely unexpected level, a place with unique landscapes in the middle of nowhere. The trip would start in Mexico city's international airport with its next destination: Huatulco, a small town in Mexico's southern coast in the state of Oaxaca, known for its ideal surfing and other adventure activities, and would lead up to the high jungle to this magic place...Yuviaga. 

Just outside the Huatulco airport is this small food stand. Oaxaca has some of the best food in the world and it almost seems you can't go wrong on where you eat! Believe me, food for Oaxacan's is a big deal and despite its humble looks this stand had some excellent food!

Andres, our host and long time friend, whom at his 23 years of age manages the plantation, was already in position waiting for us. We would reach our final destination of this trip through long dusty dirt roads in his big cargo truck. It's this crew's tradition that when the thermometer rises, there's no excuse not to open a cold one. So this was a good excuse as any, and we couldn't start the trip without first hydrating ourselves.

For almost an hour and a half we climbed through dirt roads losing all communication with modern civilization until we reached our destination. The road passes through various towns of no more than 150 habitants per community.

San Miguel del Puerto which is still about 25 minutes from the plantation is the closest town, and the last place with communication to civilization through a Satellite phone in the local grocery/phone booth.

Our first impression upon our arrival, after the one hour flight from Mexico city was the heat and humidity of the Pacific Coast, it was only 10:00 am and we were already at 32 degrees centigrade. We picked up our luggage and hoped no damage had been done to our bikes, since getting spares here would be somewhat difficult. Thankfully, everything would turn out ok

Upon our arrival, everybody had their specific duties, some were more helpful than others. We have to understand that the life of a Pro rider is hard... on a hammock.

We never imagined that after that long a drive we would reach this huge house up on the hill, a house where time had simply stopped, it was like going back to the 60's, the golden years of this plantation. Once, this plantation had more than 2000 hectares and more than 1000 workers managing and exporting the whole coffee production. All the machinery, the building, furniture and tools were from this time. Today the story is quite different, during harvest, the plantation hire's roughly 60 workers.

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE...

 

Was that the last compressed air tank?

Is there anything more rewarding than after finishing a long sweaty ride with a swim in a cool river?

We were looking around the plantation's garage for an allen key, you'd think this is pretty standard in tractors and old pick up trucks.

 We finally found the right tool for the job, thank god for industry standards.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is Mexico's most popular religious symbol and it is not uncommon to see this image guarding homes and business'.

The coffee grown here is Arabiga, and trust me, it is one of the best coffees I haver ever tried, it is a first class coffee. No fancy espresso machines here but this rudimentary way of making coffee made the experience all that much more rich.

 

The name Yuviaga comes from the tropical plant that grows alongside the river and is the native name that this coffee receives, cultivated and produced in the "El Mirador" plantation. A high altitude organic coffee that is born and grown wildly in the Oaxacan tropical forest. The traditional way of cultivation, harvest and coffee bean handling has been the same for many years now, and for which the locals have created this network of trails through the more than 600 hectares of land used to harvest the red fruit these plants produce. These trails are what served as a tropical paradise for our bikes for a few awesome days.

We stumbled upon these prehistoric drawings on this cave's wall, no one could really tell us from what ancient civilization it was from, but it was a surprising discovery for sure.

Kona, this Weimaraner dog would be our faithful guardian and companion throughout our stay on the plantation. There was no place she wouldn't follow us, and no animal or insect of which she wouldn't alert to us their presence.

The plantation in its golden days was so big and important that it had its own market, medical center, school, and this old abandoned church too. Many of the surrounding settlements must have been formed during this period.

Thanks to @deityusa for making our bikes all bling and running awesome, and @evocsports for keeping all our gear protected for this epic mission!

Riders: Diego Sada, Mauricio De Avila, Samuel Díaz
Special thanks to Andres "Cafecín" Galguera for being such a awesome host and for showing us these awesome trails.