The Assukkar plantation had the most beautiful scenery I think we've seen so far. It even houses s quaint little church that is still used on special occasions today. The church doesn't have electricity and was relocated from the middle of the town when they build a newer, larger church in its place.
After enjoying the scenery we explored the process of planing and harvesting the macadamia nut. Every tree is a male tree, which frowns very large and bears minimal amount of nuts, in contrast, the female tree is small in stature and is plentiful, by grafting a female branch into the male trees they can create a medium size tree that produces a lot of nuts. One worker can gather 40-50 baskets of nuts a day, each basket is worth 500 colones. The process between the nuts being picked and elated is extensive and involves several instances of removing the humidity from the nut before the second shell can be removed to finally extract what we know as the macadamia nut. Due to the high demand of the nut, and the low cost, one huge bucket of nuts only sells for 500 colons, or $1, they choose to send the nut, when it is stripped of its first layer and sorted to a processing plant which continues to dehydrate the nut until it can be extracted.
Next we enjoyed beverages overlooking the scenic view. We were at such a high elevation that we were in the clouds. We were offered a drink made of sugar cane juice and coffee. For the coffee, they had a brown granulated sugar, which looks like the unprocessed sugar from the mills in Louisiana, but it had a different flavor to it. It was delicious! Unfortunately we weren't able to tour the sugar cane plant, but we did get to taste and learn about it. This is one of only two companies that have figured out how to manufacture the sugar organically. I found it extremely interesting that they don't sell their sugar directly to the consumer, but sell to other companies who package it in their brand. For example, Assukkar sells to an American company called Wholesome and package the sugar under the name organic sucanat (which can be found at whole foods) 
Vitec video com was our next stop, whey manufacture high quality camera accessories such as tripods and heads. All Vitec products are handmade and high quality. One of their tripods retailed at $800 (and that wasn't the most expensive one). The reason they are so expensive is that all products are handmade, made of high quality products and are used professional photographers and videographers. One of their most expensive tripod heads costs around $20,000 and takes over 7 hours to make. Vitec does t use automated machines to create their products but instead chooses to assemble by hand because the demand is low for such high quality and expensive products.the low demand allow them to have low production at a high margin.
Lastly we quickly viewed Cartago Basilica where we learned that the church was formed around the rock of the Virgin Mary, which is still housed in the alter today. We encountered people from Venezuela who were collecting water from the blessed fountain in hopes that their government would change from the dictator like system. 
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