Oh sugar

Second and last day in Monteverde today.

We took a tour of a local organic farm which grows Coffee, Sugar and a few other crops (though they make half of their income from tourism).

Right out of the gate we saw a Sloth! These animals are actually pretty common in Costa Rica. I actually read somewhere that they make up the largest bio-mass of animals in the country. Not sure if that's true...

We toured some of the plantations in the farm.

This is a coffee plant. I had never seen one before - not even a picture! It's really surprising but the fruits of the plant (I don't think they're strictly "beans") look nothing like the final coffee bean. In fact, they strip away most of the layers to get the coffee bean. This one had a flower on which was quite unusual for this time of year, apparently.

More photos of the farm...

They demonstrated how sugar cane was processed in the past, by Ox power:

 (I knew Oxen were good for something apart from just a useful Scrabble word).

This is how sugar cane is processed now:

What you get out is a sugary liquid, which gets heated to evaporate the water.

 

This is then placed into moulds and dried out and you have sugar...

 Or it can be processed into alcohol, by evaporation (or something - I wasn't really paying attention).

And now for something different: a transparent butterfly.