How to Make a Coffee Bean Bag (Ecuador)

In a little village near the coffee production plant, they still make special bags to store the beans.

Small market outside the bag manufacturing area.

These vendors (as we discovered in all of South America) were very polite and unassuming.

Preliminary cutting of the large leaves used in the process.

This woman was in perpetual motion as she dragged the prepared strands over the nails to make them even finer. (This explains the blurry photograph!)

After the strands were put through the nail routine, they were brought to this room for further processing to convert the strands into twine.

View from the other end of the room.

Then the twine was loaded onto spools and transferred to another room where they were woven into cloth by a gentleman working this loom. The weaving process was particularly labor intensive.

After the man finished the weaving process, another person stitched the cloth together to form a coffee bean bag.

Next:  Visiting the makers of "Panama" hats in Miraflores, Ecuador.