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Private Notes
Two centuries ago, Haiti was the number 2 coffee producer in the world and home to some of the most savored coffee on the planet. After averting a brewing riot in an urban marketplace, Todd travels deep into the mountains where he navigates treacherous roads, dodges gun-toting middlemen, and sleeps under his truck for protection at night.
Todd Carmichael begins his Bolivian journey short of breath at 12,000 feet in the world's highest capital, La Paz. The Andes Mountains have every ingredient necessary to produce incredible coffee, but coffee plants are hard to find because of a much more profitable cash crop, coca -- the plant used to make cocaine.
Todd travels to Madagascar, an island 200 miles off the coast of Africa with impassable roads and ancient modes of transportation. Todd must trek by foot through dense rainforest, bat-infested tunnels and into isolated villages to find his rare and delicious treasure.
Todd ventures deep into the jungles of Borneo in search of one of the world's rarest coffee beans. He’s never seen this unique plant, but it's rumored to produce beans much larger than other types of coffee. Forging through the lush terrain, humidity, snakes and parasites, Todd crosses ancient bamboo bridges, eats slimy grub and sleeps in the wild -- all in the hope of bringing the exotic "Liberica" coffee bean back home to his roasters.
Todd Carmichael seeks a new discovery in the birthplace of coffee: Ethiopia. Coffee was discovered in Ethiopia around 1000 AD, and has grown to be a big business in the country. Todd will need to avoid interference from the government, which controls most of Ethiopia’s coffee. He must brave fatal roads, evade wild predators and avoid confrontations with gun-toting sentries ... all to track down the purest bean in coffee's own Garden of Eden.
Todd Carmichael travels to Cambodia, a country known more for ancient Buddhist temples than for coffee. There are reports, however, that high-end Japanese and Korean roasters are buying a Cambodian bean. If there's a specialty-grade coffee to buy and sell back home, Todd needs to find it, and so begins the journey to find the truth behind the rumors that Cambodia may be a major player in the exotic coffee market. But the difficult search takes the coffee adventurer on a brutal motorcycle trek through dense jungles ravaged by monsoons.
Todd is on the hunt for a rare blue mountain coffee known for its cocoa flavor in Papua New Guinea. Todd travels the infamous Highlands Highway, a road known for hijackings, murders and potholes larger than his truck. Will he find a village that is organized enough, high enough, remote enough and talented enough to be growing one of the best specialty coffees in the world?
Once known for drug cartels and violence, Colombia is in the process of reclaiming its legacy as one of the greatest coffee producers in the world -- and Todd wants to be on the front lines of its rebirth. During his journey, he visits veteran coffee farmers forced to live in shantytowns and abandoned farms destroyed by guerrilla groups.
