How it all came about
My travel date had not yet been set and then the unexpected happened: one day the PRO7 TV station called me and asked very detailed questions about guarana. They were looking for a guarana expert from Germany with whom they wanted to make a film about guarana - from the harvest to the end product - on location in Brazil. My good contacts with Brazilian suppliers and cooperatives and the fact that I was one of the first importers of guarana in Germany were another plus. So I was eager and excited to combine a business trip with the rare experience of filming!
Join me on this exciting and unforgettable journey into the jungle.
Departure and arrival
Flying from cold and wet November Germany to the warm and humid rainforest is a real contrast. The first thing you see on landing is an indescribable, shimmering gray concrete desert called Sao Paolo: a seething metropolis, wild traffic chaos, heat. Fortunately, I don't have to stay here.
Stage 1 - a small acerola factory and plantation near Ourinho
My first destination is a good business partner in Ourinho, Mr. Moacir.
Out of love for nature, he moved away from Sao Paolo to take care of the cultivation and processing of the fruit in the immediate vicinity of small acerola plantations. Although plantations is a bit of an exaggeration: they are more like huge gardens in which acerola bushes grow, among other things. This means that the freshly harvested fruit can be transported to the production facility over short distances and processed as quickly as possible in order to meet the highest quality standards.
The acerola harvest takes place from October to April/May. I also spend two days helping to pick the ripe acerola cherries, which I collect in a shoulder bag and then transfer to boxes, which are collected daily by Mr. Moacir and processed immediately.
Before we say goodbye, we have a convivial meal at the home of the plantain owners, Jose with his wife and two sons, consisting of feijao. This traditional bean dish is always available everywhere. For dessert, acerola fruits are served straight from the bush.
Stage 2: Bahia de Salvador
Salvador is the most famous tourist city in Brazil with the most beautiful beaches. But I don't have time to sunbathe, because now comes the most exciting moment for me: I meet the Galileo film team: Claudia, Paul and Jens. They greet me with conspicuous relief, which is for a good reason: none of them speak a word of Brazilian (which is Portuguese, but about the same as Bavarian in German) - luckily I do. When a Brazilian says that he speaks "fluent English", this is by no means a lie, but it is often only almost true. He knows three indispensable words, namely "yes", "no" and "stop", but he speaks them fluently. As a result, from now on I will not only be used as a professional consultant and amateur actress, but also as an interpreter.
We drive in a "micro" (a kind of South American VW bus) towards Valenca, a very simple "jungle village" with charming local color. It lies in the middle of the Atlantic jungle (the so-called Mata Atlantica). This is where the cooperative's office is located, where, after a warm welcome, we spend three full hours talking about soccer because we Germans managed to beat the Argentinians in the last World Cup. Around 100 family businesses have joined together in "our" cooperative, for example to optimize prices, hold targeted training courses and optimize medical care.
3. guarana and machete
The next morning - meeting point at 6.00 a.m. on the plantation. The midday heat rises to 35 °C in the shade, which means that it can easily be 50 °C in the middle of the plantation - the thought of sunstroke comes to mind. But today is shooting day for the guarana harvest.
A quick breakfast of guarana juices and cookies with the harvest workers and then we're off. Everyone gets their harvesting tools: basket, tongs and machete (I still need to practise with the machete. I barely managed to make my way with it, let alone open a coconut. Instead, I perforated the ground).
A guarana fruit is ripe as soon as the outer red shell bursts open and the black seed underneath becomes visible. Guarana originally comes from the Amazon region. The excellent growing conditions in Bahia allow the plant to thrive here too. Bahia guarana is now considered to be the highest quality in Brazil.
Guarana is not grown as a monoculture. The guarana bushes grow amidst a rich variety of plants and are widely scattered. During the guarana harvest, the harvesters walk 5-10 km a day on uneven paths in hilly terrain at 40 °C in the shade - a really strenuous job.
Bananas or fresh, delicious cocoa plants practically grow in our mouths to satisfy our hunger in between. Thirst is quenched with young, refreshing coconuts, which also explains why the harvest workers here are constantly waving a machete around: firstly, to make their way through the thicket, and secondly, to knock a tasty coconut off the tree here and there.
It's time for lunch. We are generously catered for. There is rice and potatoes, chicken, bacon, fish and, of course, manioc. This is a must - the flour made from it is used in a similar way to parmesan. We eat from simple tin bowls - it tastes delicious! Life takes place outside: Kitchen, bathroom, meals - all open air.
In the late afternoon, the harvested fruit is transferred into sacks and stacked in a hut to ferment for around 4-6 days. Harvest workers then crush the fermented kernels with their feet in a samba beat, completely removing the skins from the kernels. Finally, the kernels are sorted by hand and then washed in a water tank and the shells floating on top are skimmed off with a hand sieve and used as natural fertilizer.
The black kernels are then heated on an open "hearth" to reduce the moisture content to approx. 7%. Once the kernels have cooled on a tarpaulin, they are packed in bags and taken to the cooperative's warehouse in Valenca, where they are cleaned of any remaining dust and dirt in a wooden drum using a fan (which the Brazilians proudly call a "wind tunnel").
I find it interesting that the main customer of "our" plantation is the largest Brazilian lemonade producer, which sells the "national drink" guarana (water, sugar and a touch of guarana) throughout the country with great success. A few years ago, there was an attempt to introduce the lemonade in Europe, but this failed due to its extreme sweetness.
4th Acai harvest and farewell
My trip is coming to an end, the Galileo team has already moved on. I take the opportunity to visit a small acai plantation.
The plantation owner lives here on his fazenda and mainly grows acai and cloves, which are experiencing a huge boom. The young acai palms grow in the middle of the jungle, a popular meeting place for blue and yellow parrots.
I saw a world that is rarely accessible to tourists. A world without cell phones, computers or televisions. Just the radio - you want to know whether someone is beating the Argentinians again. The intense impressions and feelings will stay with me for a long time - as so often after my visits there. But the next visit to this diversity and abundance of life, in pure nature, will not be long in coming.
Our suppliers are exclusively small, committed family businesses whose motivation is to preserve the rainforest as their livelihood and not to exploit it.