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Story: Nguyet Pham
Photos: Nguyen Quang Ngoc
Poetic views of coffee flowers and misty valleys await visitors to Dalat in February
Residents of Vietnam’s mountain cities and visitors to its Central Highlands are no strangers to the sight of coffee flowers. We should take some time to enjoy beautiful scenes of green hillsides dotted with familiar white blossoms. A strange yet familiar sensation will definitely grow as you enjoy these poetic views.
As with almost every tourist visiting Dalat, admiring coffee flowers was never part of my plan. Instead, it was a delightful suggestion made by a a local friend, who’s a farmer. Thanks to that tip, I enjoyed a unique and satisfying experience in the misty and fragrant February days.
In other areas, coffee flowers usually bloom in December or January, but in Dalat and Lam Dong province, they bloom in February and March. Those who visit the Highlands at this time of year can combine cloud-hunting with flower-watching, as Dalat’s cloudy valleys are at their most beautiful in early spring. Coincidentally, the route to the misty valleys also leads to the verdant coffee hills.
Roads with white flowers
As coffee flowers only bloom once a year, few tours are designed solely for flower-watching. Yet the beauty of going alone lies in the surprises: what you discover on the road is sometimes much more valuable than what you expected.
After leaving Dalat city in the early morning headed for Cau Dat town on National Route 20, be sure to stop at Da Loc Hill. There you can enjoy watching a sea of clouds engulfing the valleys, pine forests, and greenhouses that sleep soundly on the opposite hillsides. As the sun rises and the mist fades, continue your journey along Route 20, and you will reach the Hoa Xa Tunnels (Xuan Tho commune) – another unique destination to explore and photograph. You will see coffee plantations brimming with blossoms along this route as well. The best place to enjoy the flowers is around Cau Dat town, a top destination for growing Arabica coffee.
Turning right off National Route 20 will lead you to Xuan Son commune. Proceed for about one more kilometer and the road will reveal coffee fields as far as the eye can see. You can enjoy the feeling of driving through vast swathes of coffee bushes. Thanks to the region’s unique sloping terrain, you can admire the entire hillside, covered in white blossoms like snowflakes hanging off the branches. Near, far, low, and high, the flowers form beautiful layers in the morning mist.
You might see several students riding bicycles along the quiet country lanes in the mist – an image that’s so beautiful, pure, and peaceful. The best time for flower-watching is about 6 to 7 a.m., when the gentle rays of morning sun, the cool breeze, and the morning chill help to spread the fragrance, which is easy to recognize from miles away. The coffee’s fragrance is akin to that of jasmine flowers, and combines with the smells of dried grass, dew, and the chill to create a calm, soft, and relaxing feeling.
If you’d like a change of scenery but don’t want to wake up early and travel 20km from the city center to go flower-watching, you can arrive at dusk to watch the sun set over the white hillsides and sleep in a local homestay. The next morning, you can go cloud-hunting at dawn, then return to your homestay for breakfast, and enjoy admiring the coffee flowers as you travel back to Dalat. It’s easy to find a cozy homestay in Dat Lang hamlet, Cau Dat town, or Xuan Son commune.
The honey season
You may have heard of coffee blossom honey from Lam Dong and Dalat but have you ever wondered if you could come across a beehive during the harvest season on this winding road? This was a remarkable experience for me. On the journey to Cau Dat from Route 20, as you near the Hoa Xa Tunnels, you will see a pine forest by the roadside. A bee farm is located on the way to the coffee farm, where the bees go for nectar.
The bees’ destinations differ depending on which flowers are in bloom. They fly to the Mekong Delta when the longan and coconut flowers bloom and travel all the way to Binh Phuoc to get nectar from rubber trees. They only travel to Dalat around ten days before the first coffee flowers bloom. The first coffee flowers give off an intense and sweet fragrance, which is highly attractive to the bees. If you travel through the coffee plantations, you will see bees so intent on harvesting nectar that they are unaware of your presence. Two to three weeks after the first flowers bloom is the time to harvest honey.
The harvesting process contains some fascinating stages: under the pine trees, farmers spread nets and engulf the area in smoke to ward off the bees and collect the honey frames for uncapping, then put them in an extractor to squeeze out the honey. The stages may sound simple, but visitors can hardly contain their astonishment upon witnessing this process for the first time.
February in Dalat is not only known for its winter chills and misty, cloudy, and dry weather, but also for its pure white coffee flowers. Their delicate fragrance and the sweet taste of coffee flower honey are famous throughout the region.
