Empowering people in Haiti to improve the environment --- Central Haiti ecotours! --- Northern Haiti ecotours!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Tour ideas
I'll keep track of ideas for tours here. Please comment if you have additional ideas!
Coffee - Haitian coffee is really unique - it is roasted then roasted again in a sugar cane molasses. Show visitors the entire process, from fruit to final product: coffee trees, harvesting, fruit (let them taste it), how beans are extracted, roasted, and ground. Sell them the final ground coffee. Or even the roasted beans - Americans often grind their own coffee.
Banana and plantain fields or plantations - Explain how these are cultivated and how to tell the plants apart. Are they eaten locally or transported across the country, or exported?
Coconuts - hack open a coconut for a visitor to drink and eat.
Sugar cane - Point out the sugar cane fields and presses. If anyone is pressing cane, take them to see it and ask the workers if pictures can be taken. Explain the entire pressing process and how the juice is processed into rum. Are there industrial plants that produce granulated sugar? Explain why or why not. Perhaps visitors should give the press people a dollar or two per group. Also show visitors the equipment left over from colonial days. Explain how the molasses residue is made and sown up in leaves (see the picture of this with the roasted coffee). Cut a piece of cane and show visitors how to eat it.
If you are ever looking for a place to stay in Pignon, Haiti Outreach (www.haitioutreach.org) has a clean, affordable and new Kai Visite (guest house) within walking distance of the Pignon airport, which is open to the public. You can book a single room or the entire guest house for your group. Keep up the good work!
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