The coffee you drink at home hung on a bush somewhere, and somebody picked it. You know that, and you have never watched it happen.
On the slopes above Moshi you can do the whole run yourself, in one morning. Pick, husk, dry, roast, grind, and then drink what you made. It is not a tour where you stand and watch somebody else demonstrate it.
What you do on a coffee tour
You start with a cup of coffee, because that is how it goes, and then you walk into the planting. The bushes stand in among the bananas, which is no accident. The banana leaves give shade and hold the moisture, and the coffee grows underneath. That system here is older than anybody.
Then you pick. Only the red cherries, because the green ones are not ready, and you learn to see the difference faster than you would think. Inside every cherry sit two beans pressed flat against each other. Sometimes only one of them develops, and then it comes out round instead of flat. That is a peaberry, and they get kept separate, because they roast differently and they taste different.
After that the fruit has to come off. That happens by hand or with a wooden press, and what is left is a smooth white bean, still wet. It goes out to dry in the sun, and then into the pan over a wood fire, where you turn it yourself until it browns and the smell flips over from grass to coffee.
The last part is the grinding, in a wooden mortar, two of you at a time, and usually somebody sings along because otherwise it takes too long. That is not folklore laid on for visitors, that is how you keep going.
And then you drink it, with a lunch of what gets eaten here. Your coffee tastes better than it has any right to, because you know how much work is in it.
How long a coffee tour in Moshi takes
Reckon on half a day, including the drive there and back and the lunch. You leave in the morning and you are back in Moshi in the afternoon.
Which makes it a good first day. You have only just landed, you have not got the rhythm yet, and this asks nothing of you except attention. The day after that you can go on.
Why coffee here works differently from elsewhere
These are Chagga slopes. The people who live here have grown coffee and bananas on the same ground for generations, with water channels running down the mountain that are older than any plantation you could visit.
And the coffee here is organised. The coffee farmers of Kilimanjaro sit in cooperatives, and those are affiliated to an umbrella union founded in 1930 that now takes in ninety local cooperatives. It is the oldest cooperative in Tanzania.
That sounds like a footnote and it is not. It means the farmer showing you how to pick is not an employee of a plantation, he is a member of his own cooperative. Which is why the conversation along the way is about prices, about harvests and about what makes a good year, rather than about a script.
On its own, or together with the Materuni waterfall
We offer the coffee tour two ways.
The coffee on its own. Half a day, with the full run from bush to cup and the lunch with it. This is the version for anybody who wants to take it gently, or who only has one free morning.
Coffee and the waterfall. The longer version puts the coffee tour together with the waterfall at Materuni. You walk down to the water first, about forty minutes, where you can swim if you dare, and you do the coffee afterwards. That is a full day and you come home tired.
Which of the two suits you depends on how many days you have in Moshi and on the state of your legs. The path to the waterfall gets slippery in the wet months, so bring shoes that can take mud.
When to go
Any time of year works, and it does differ.
In the harvest months there is the most to see and the most to do, because everything is hanging full and there is real picking going on. Outside the harvest you do the same steps with beans that have already been picked, and that works too, you just see the planting at rest.
More important for your planning is the rain. In the wet months the paths on the slopes are slippery and the drives up are slower. June through September, and January and February, are the most comfortable.
With children
This works well with children. There is plenty to do with your hands, it does not go on too long, and the mortar is the favourite part of anybody under twelve.
If you do the combination with the waterfall, bear in mind that the path goes down and then back up again, and that the last stretch on the way back is harder than it looks.
How it fits into your trip
The coffee tour belongs with the days in Moshi, at the start of your trip or at the end of it.
Tell us how many days you have here and we will say whether the short or the long version fits.
