“What exactly am I drinking!?”

I try to be a responsible tourist.  I try to do the right thing…it doesn’t always work.  I found a man on the side of the road and hired him to be our driver for the day – before you panic Mom, this is common practice in Bali.  It is our first day in Bali and the plan is to enjoy some traditional Balinese stuff…like temples and lotus flowers floating on ponds.  Through a combination of broken English and charades that is what I thought I communicated to the driver. 

We didn’t ask to be taken to a Luwak plantation – our driver just sort of stopped.  I think it was just an impulse when two white tourists get into the car.  I had heard about this coffee years ago…just didn’t realize it was Indonesian…or a real thing.  But we obligatorily followed his finger pointing through a gate and down a path surrounded by coffee plants.  Little placards told us informative tidbits, locals put on bean grinding demonstrations and then we came upon a few cages with adorable rodent-looking creature peering out at us from their little caves.  I could tell Lauren was a little perplexed trying to figure out what these beady-eye animals have to do with coffee…and I may have stood in front of that placard to keep the mystery alive (once I realized where I was). 

Eventually the path led us to the touristy ‘café’ where, for a small fortune, we could purchase a sampler of local teas and one full cup of Luwak coffee.  So for those, who like Lauren didn’t know until after the first sip, Luwak coffee is ground from beans that are fished out of the fecal matter of the Palm Civet Cat.  

Yes, you read correctly, the shit.  These feline creatures gobble down what I presume are delicious coffee cherries and the indigestible pit passes through some special gastric juices before the anal glands impart a musky smoothness that results in a unique cup of joe. 

It sounds like historically these beans were harvested by people walking through the forest in search of piles of Palm Civet Cat crap to fish out the beans…sadly that is not the case now days.  Although unbeknownst to myself at the time, there is some shady underworld that allegedly force feed these cats beans to harvest as much crap as possible.   The coffee was formerly expensive due to the rarity of the beans…sadly it seems pricy now just to capitalize on the novelty.

To Lauren’s credit, she finished the cup.