Costa Rico boasts its beans.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: !Ojo!

FOR TOURISTS VISITING Costa Pica, taking Cafe Britt's famous coffee tour has practically become a rite of passage.

On a typical weekday, dozens of North American, Japanese, and European tourists can be seen trooping around the Cafe Britt estate in Heredia, just outside the capital of San Jose, thoroughly enjoying what has become one of the most famous "coffee tours" in the world. Actors and actresses in traditional nineteenth-century Costa Rican costumes explain the history of the world's most popular drink through bilingual skits, video presentations, songs, and a walk through a working coffee plantation.

Over 400,000 people have taken the Cafe Britt coffee tour since it was inaugurated a little over a decade ago.

"They get all the espresso and cappuccino they can drink, and samples of chocolate-covered coffee beans at the end of the tour," says company president Steven Aronson, a transplanted New Yorker who started Cafe Britt in 1985 and has turned it into Costa Pica's largest and best known exporter of Central Valley, Tres Rios, and Tarrazu gourmet coffees.

The three campesinos who guide the tourists around Cafe Britt's operations are played by professional actors: Roberto Zeledon, who plays Jose Antonio; Xochitl Avalos Leon, who plays Jose's girlfriend, Marielitos; and Salvador Solis, who plays Don Prospero.

"Jose" and "Marielitos," the latter in sundress and apron, her hair protected by a scarf, lead the group of forty or so tourists into the plantation to show them how to pick their own ripe coffee beans and taste the juice. The actors' humorous banter--a history lesson interspersed with corny jokes--continues as visitors are led into an air-conditioned auditorium where they're shown a video of the entire roasting process. After that, they're asked to participate in a cupping session, where the coffee's flavor and aroma are analyzed.

The guides tell the tourists that all coffee grown in Costa Pica must, by law, be arabica, not robusta. "Arabica beans are sweeter, have less caffeine, and get better prices on the international market," says Marielitos. "If you plant anything else, they'll close your...