The Year of Magical Traveling: Coffee or bust

Ready for a coffee quiz?

Of the 88 million pounds of fair trade coffee imported to the US in 2008, which country sent the highest percentage?
a. Ethiopia
b. Peru
c. Colombia
d. Guatemala

Based on the prevailing theme of this blog, you might have correctly guessed... Peru! Fair trade coffee from Peru represented 25% of all fair trade coffee imported to the US in 2008. Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua each represented 10%.

Until Sam edited Think Fair Trade First a couple of years ago and I wrote scavenger hunt questions for the book launch party, I had no clue that Peru was a big coffee producer, let alone the largest supplier to the US of fair trade coffee. I suppose that represented how little I knew about Peru, period. Peru even exports its coffee to Colombia!

But even though coffee is a massive operation here, few Peruvians actually drink it... and if they do, they drink Nescafé. I’m not sure that counts as coffee, but I won’t quibble with their choice. Nescafé is big.

This corner is brought to you by Nescafé.

This building is apparently brought to you by Nescafé.

And while I have yet to patronize the giant Nescafé coffee cup mounted on a bicycle, wheeled around to serve Nescafé and sandwiches to the Miraflores masses, I think it is fabulous.

Once I knew about Peru’s coffee production, one of my travel goals was to visit a coffee farm or production site. I wanted to see the plants, learn more about the whole process, and of course, taste some coffee!

We ended up visiting the region of Chanchamayo, about 8 hours from Lima, known for its coffee: “We are not necessarily known for the quantity of coffee produced, but rather for the quality of our coffee,” said our guide and taxi driver Feliciano.

La Florida was our next door neighbor. Although we couldn't visit, all of the various certifications and clients painted on their wall were enough to convince us to give their coffee a try when we saw it at the market.

The place we stayed at had sent us information about visiting various coffee haciendas, but when we tried to arrange a visit, we learned that they came with a 4-hour round trip drive. Fresh off of steep, twisty mountain roads descending into the jungle, which made our little boy very carsick (prompting the woman sitting behind me to get carsick too), we weren’t interested in more driving.

No problem, our host said. Two places nearby could explain the process and we could taste the coffee as part of a tour of various Chanchamayo sights and specialties. We were game.

It was very cool to see coffee beans drying out at various places along the road. The ones shown here were the largest we saw; we also saw many tiny batches laid out next to homes. Sam mentioned that coffee is one of the only commodities that is grown by smaller farmers instead of on plantations.

The tour was a total bust. After our first stop to “nearby” waterfalls took 2 hours to get to instead of 40 minutes as promised, after hearing that the tour was really supposed to last until late at night instead of early afternoon as our host had mentioned, after the driver started falling asleep while driving us to our lunch destination, we nixed the rest of the tour to get to the goal of the day: the coffee stops!

The first place, Chanchamayo Highland Coffee, bills itself as fair trade and pairs their fair trade ads with scantily clad women. Interesting marketing strategy: hopefully it works for them.

Clearly more bust than coffee. I think this is kind of funny: "Welcome to Fair Trade" is written at the top. "Call me" is at the bottom right. I'm not sure I want to know what kind of phone calls that phone number receives...

A young woman greeted us and proceeded to offer us countless samples of jams, juices, dried fruits, bland ice creams... and finally, one sample of lukewarm, sweetened coffee. Hmmm. Then she walked us over to the artesanía section and invited us to browse. Once we realized there was no tour, no talk, just buying, we asked our tour guide to take us to the next place.

There, at Green Gold, we got a better explanation and actually saw some coffee beans, but still, all was focused on purchasing their value-added products. We finally surrendered and bought some coffee.