-
This is a set of images from my recent trip to Ethiopia, and instead of trying to represent everywhere I went, I focused only on images I wanted to caption, ones I thought were worth making notes about. As I have traveled a fairly broad path, that changes over time. I look for things that provide exceptions, or image matter that "hooks" me, that I find myself taking over and over. I look for something out of order, or things that make me ask "why." I have also taken a step into some rather arbitrary camera techniques, mostly just to amuse myself and prevent boredom, but with some results I feel are justified my the circumstances of the exposure. -Tom
Last updated: Thu, 2013-01-10 13:02 -
We camped for several days in the Simien Mountains National Park in Northern Ethiopia, about 100 km north of the city of Gondar. It is a Unesco World Heritage site, a series of high plateaus with towering peaks above 4000 meters including Mount Dashen, possibly the 4th highest peak in Africa. Simiens is known for several large mammal species that are endangered and for the dramatic views, enhanced by rapid changes in weather and dramatic lighting. I was with Chris Jordan and Aleco Chigounis, and it was a once in a lifetime chance to see an amazing part of Ethiopia that is off the normal parth for my coffee travels. -Tom
Last updated: Sun, 2013-01-06 22:58 -
Roha was the original name for this small town placed at 2500 meters in the Amharic region of Northern Ethiopia. It was the center of the Zagwe dynasty that ruled the land from the 10th to 13th centuries, and the name was changed in honor of King Lalibela, who (rather unbelievably) constructed plethora of churches from solid rock within his lifetime, inspired to create a "new Jerusalem." Lalibela is a UNESCO world heritage site, and must be seen to be believed. In fact the earliest Europeans to encounter Lalibela felt they would not be believed if they wrote of it. In the 1520's the first visit from a Portuguese priest inspired him to write "I weary of writing more about these buildings, because it seems to me that I shall not be believed if I write more ... I swear by God, in Whose power I am, that all I have written is the truth." It is no longer such a remote town to visit, now that there is daily air service from Addis. There were few if any Americans there though during our...
Last updated: Sun, 2013-01-06 18:19 -
The more directly we work on coffee projects, the more we need to visit coffee origins in the off season to make plans for the harvest. This was a quick trip (made even shorter by delayed flights and missed connections in Houston) to visit Acatenango, Antigua and Huehuetenango and check in on our coffee partners there.
Last updated: Mon, 2012-11-05 18:27 -
Aleco and I made a trip to Ethiopia to scout out new possibilities, and to eat Tibs. Here are a few pictures I selected from that trip. I am lugging around a 6 x 6 Hasselblad film camera as well, and when I load the film correctly the results are quite nice -Thompson
Last updated: Mon, 2012-08-27 11:45 -
A selection of images from my trip to Java and Sulawesi in July. This was not my first time to either place, but they are both visually fascinating, as well as rewarding for the great coffees we have sourced here. Be warned that a few photos from the Sulawesi funeral Pesta are gory.
Last updated: Mon, 2012-08-27 11:38 -
There I was, once again, in Costa Rica. How did this happen? The coffee is overpriced in many cases. There are not many opportunities here. The cost of living is soaring and there are Americans with second homes or retirement homes all over. It is a very beautiful place, and I respect the farmers a lot. They are proud, independent and inventive, generally. Who can blame them for wanting everything they can get for their coffee? The main issue at play with rising prices is the competition by small buyers. This place is so easily accessed. Buyers swarm all over and drive up prices on themselves without a great regard for cup quality: When you have a lot of buyers with uncallibrated tastes and some limited experience, even some marginally defective lots will sell and high prices. There is still some very fine coffee. But CR is a difficult place to work. -Tom
Last updated: Thu, 2012-04-12 18:36 -
If you travel, perhaps you have been somewhere that confuses you a bit, where things don't quite add up, where you can't get a good sense of where you are. Perhaps that happens geographically, because it seems like some places you have been, and unlike any place you have been as well. Perhaps its the local culture, the people, unlike any you have encountered. Perhaps its the economy, you can't get the monetary conversion right; it's cheap one place and ridiculously expensive another. Perhaps it's security, and you can't decide whether all the happy smiling people are friendly, or whether, in a different circumstance, they would steal everything you possess. What if it's all those things. What if every ten minutes or so, someone says something that you just can't quite believe the said. Like "that guy with the crutches on the road, I had to shoot his leg, during the siege, when the village elder told the locals it's okay to take our farm and kill us." But then you just sorta wave...
Last updated: Fri, 2011-08-05 16:29 -
Yes, 5 Star Certified. That's what you have to do when you take your fancy camera to Sumatra, and proceed to take 1250 photos. And that's after paring them down on a daily basis. You end up with a mere 202 verified 5 star images. I jest. But I hope this image set and the comments will give some indication of both hope and futility of trying to figure out the Sumatra coffee system, and exactly how anything can survive it and actually taste good. Sumtra defies all logic. Whatever you learn in other coffee-producing places rarely applies here. And seemingly they break every rule in the process. But then Sumatra doesn't taste like other coffees. Should it? If Sumatra conformed to other "best practices" would we have a wanna-be, second-rate wet-process style coffee to call Sumatra? Or is it better that all these Catimor and Hibrido de Timor cultivars, with mixed arabica and robusta genes, should be processed in a way that obscures there varietal character? These are the questions...
Last updated: Fri, 2012-02-24 16:03 -
About the title ...I lied. It was not that fun, and definitely not for profit. We were in Guatemala as the NY coffee market hit a 34 year high (profit for the exporters and market speculators, very hard on the coffee buyers!) as well as an odd climate with elections coming up soon. Lider, just plain odd. Add to this the problems in the north with narco traffic and gangs, and traveling without local guidance in a rental car, and in hindsight the trip seems a tad unwise. 3 people were shot dead at a restaurant near Huehue at noon the day before we arrived. Another coffee buyer was held up at gunpoint. It's the wild wild west here. Still, there are a lot of hard-working coffee producers tied to their land and their crop, which is worth more this year than for many previous. That is creating more instability though. With the high coffee cherry prices, trees are being picked at night time by theives, coffee stolen from patios and warehouses. And all the candidates promise Order and...
Last updated: Thu, 2011-03-24 15:48
For older travelogues, please visit this page.
