Venezuelan Sugar and Coffee

On our way to lake to Lake Maracaibo to visit the lightning, our tour guide Alan brought us to a sugar factory, and a coffee plantation.

Here is what the sugar factory looked like as we approached:

The process works like this:

In the lower left of this picture is a huge pile of cane. Which gets handed to the shirtless guy, who puts it through the crushing machine. The crushing machine outputs sugar cane juice, and crushed cane.

The crushed cane gets hauled out into the sun to dry:

 After the cane dries in the sun, they burn it to boil the cane juice. This guy's job is to haul the dry cane into the furnace bit below the boiling tubs.

The boiling tubs look like this:

This guy's job is to stand by the boiling pits preventing boil-over, and generally moving scum towards the right, and yummy to-be-sugar to the left.

All the way to the left of that guy, was a big table, where they take the sugar and form it into blocks.

Alan purchased 2 blocks for one or two dollars each. It ended up being the sugar we used in our coffee for the next few days.

The scum on the right kept being pushed towards the final tub, where it was boiled down to make molasses.

This is molasses. They use it to feed animals.

After visiting the sugar factory, we drove up a hill to check out some coffee.

There was a narrow concrete path down the coffee plantation.

This coffee plant has lots of beans growing.

But only one ripe red bean.

It was steep jungle all around.

Back in the processing building, Alan weighed himself on the bean scale.

They washed the beans in this big tile area for several days.

Here is their huge roaster.

We drove back down the mountain and enjoyed a fresh cup of coffee. Lisa has a "grande".

We were asking about exports, when Alan explained, that Venezuela doesn't really have any exports right now, and is importing a lot of food just to feed everyone.