Prior to being picked up for a two-day rafting adventure on the Rio Pacuare, we are sitting in the lobby of the hotel after checking out. We're feeling a little brave, because we're leaving the majority of our things here in the custody of the hotel. Not that we have a choice; there is a 25 lb. luggage weight limit for the rafting trip, because everything we take must go on the raft with us.

There's a group of four here who are waiting to be picked up for a day trip on the Reventazon, a class 3 river. Our trip is on the Pacuare, a class 4. We think that the lower the number, the harder the rapids. At least we hope so.

One of the group of four introduces himself as Mike, a buyer with Green Mountain Coffee in Vermont. Green Mountain is one of those small coffee roasters popping up to fulfill the needs of espresso drinkers everywhere. He and his friends are down here on business--they buy coffee from a plantation here called L'Amental (never got the spelling). In contrast to the big coffee growers, this place sorts their beans 12 times instead of 6, do not use herbicides or pesticides, and instead pay workers to come and machete the underbrush three times a year. The result, Mike says, is a high quality product.

Mike was a hell of a salesman for the process, but then, he was preaching to the converted. As he said, it's great to promote sustainable ecological growth but the ultimate goal is to have a product that you would buy no matter how it was grown or manufactured. Like Ben & Jerry's over Hagan-Daaz, Jill said, you select one over the other for the extra mile they've traveled to make the world a better place and your taste buds don't have to suffer for it...