16 January - Day 2 in Columbo

 So today I was off to visit a tea plantation… and bonus… rubber plantation too.

First pictures are of rubber trees and how the sap is gathered.

This guy went around from tree to tree emptying the little cups into a big bucket.

Here are the tea plant fields (or are they orchards?). The tall trees are ‘nitrogen producers’ and natural fertilizers… (that’s for you Jack Rico)

Then the tea is handpicked and processed in the factory.  We were not supposed to take photos in the factory… so I took one of the process flow diagram (the engineers in the group will LOVE this:))

And of course… we had to exit through the ‘gift shop’.  In this case the ‘original supervisors cottage’ where we had tea and what looked and tasted like pound cake!

Notice the use of corrugated metal… note to self
another use for cortex steel:)

That was the good news… later that afternoon (thank god after I got back the ship!!) I developed a little stomach bug… spent the evening in my room.  My butler (that sounds so pretentious) was very sweet and brought hot tea and lemon…