Brewing up in Ethiopia’s epicenter of coffee

(CNN)Bonga is a name rarely encountered when visiting Ethiopia, if at all.

But it deserves to be better known: it’s said to be the very birthplace of Arabica coffee.
Despite its caffeinated claim, the multi-billion dollar global industry that has grown up around coffee has passed Bonga by.
Today, this little town hidden away deep in southwestern Ethiopia sits quietly in unspoiled subtropical cloud forests brimming with coffee trees, wild honey, natural wonders and wildlife.
The term coffee is said to derive from Kaffa, the ancient name for the present-day Oromia region in which Bonga lies.
The story goes that sometime around the 6th century in forests near Bonga, a goatherd named Kaldi spotted his animals getting frisky after eating red berries from a shrub he’d never seen before.
So Kaldi gave the berries a try himself and the coffee bean was discovered.
Early morning starts, dull office meetings and weak excuses for prolonging hot dates would never be the same again.
An early morning in Bonga finds the town’s slopes enveloped in low-lying clouds caused by the air’s characteristically high moisture content.
The effect is impressively cinematic as households come to life, their chimneys releasing narrow columns of cooking smoke that rise into the surrounding mist.Read more: CNN