I love coffee. I love its smell and its effect (although a cup of coffee has long stopped working its magic). So when I finally got my invitation letter for Peace Corps Guatemala I thought - great! I'm looking forward to finally really learning Spanish and I will drink some great coffee along the way. Wrong. Well partially. My host family drinks Nestle instant decaf coffee. No part of that appeals to me. I also find this to be sad. Why should we (in the states) get to enjoy their great coffee when they don't?
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Breakfast Guate style
coffee and an omelette andddd beans and tortillas of course |
Last weekend we visited the 'Centro Cultural La Azotea' which was part cultural museum and part coffee museum and plantation. Here our spanish-speaking tour guide told us all about how coffee is grown and the process that turns it into the stuff that we drink and also about Guatemalan music and traditional Mayan dances. I learned that Guatemala is 9th in world coffee production (although apparently not much of it stays in country). My favorite thing that our guide said was: "Nescafe = NO ES CAFE." Agreed.
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| Happily in a sea of coffee |
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| The five stages of coffee - starts out as the fruit in the center! |
Oh neat, puns in Spanish.
ReplyDeleteSo what have you been doing for caffeine?
For a while I was just drinking the instant coffee that my host family was making me or getting good coffee in Antigua. When I moved to my two-year site placement I got a french press and bought bagged coffee. A huge improvement.
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