On Coffee

Spending my last afternoon in Ecuador, as tomorrow, Argentina beckons. It´s been fabulous, and I´ve literally enjoyed every single day of this trip.

I´m feeling pretty good about moving on, though. Largely because I´ve just completed the final Ecuadorian must-do: bought a crapload of supermarket coffee at the local Tïa in old Quito.

It is, I assure you, not just any supermarket coffee. Cafe Minerva, which is basically Folgers for Ecuador, is, in my humble opinion, the most fabulous coffee in the entire known world. And I´m including the pricey gathered-by-monkeys-and-made-by-the-cup nonsense beloved by the coffee elite in the Bay Area. It´s dark, silky, and delicious, and it costs two bucks for a bag that makes 80 cups of the stuff.

I hit Tia with Stacey, who is perhaps the only person I know who loves coffee more than I do; I have vivid memories of our first Project year, when Stacey would show up for breakfast every morning with her own little French press and a snack-sized Ziploc of grounds from the States. Her response to seeing me literally embracing my four packs of Minerva was a good deal of skepticism, and the suggestion that I save space in my suitcase for Argentian cafe.

As Stacey chats on the phone a few feet away in this cabina, however, I fortify myself with more information in my defense. According to Wikipedia, Ecuador is one of very few nations that produces and exports ALL varieties of coffee, and has over fifty countries lined up for the goods. In 2001, Ecuador produced 63,720 metric tons of coffee. While the magical bean´s role in the economy has diminished in the face of increased revenues from tourism and immigration, it remains one of the main agricultural exports, after bananas.

And often, it is absolutely delicious. Today began with a cafe con leche, hand poured at our table as a perfect equilibrium of dark coffee and milk. The cups here are so small that another coffee mid morning is always a good idea: we had lunch at a fair-trade shop and my iced mochachino was about 2% milkfat short of a chocolate shake. I still fondly remember the cafe pasado (basically, aged coffee wine) we had in Ambato a few years ago, and every cup of Minerva I drink reminds me of my time staying with coordinator Gladys, who somehow always finds time in her insane save-the-world schedule to make soup for lunch and serve coffee at sunset.

Coffee is a ritual here: in Cuenca, the traditional afternoon snack is dark, sweetened coffee with humitas, which are like unfilled tamales. Anywhere with a large Colombian population has men selling coffee from a thermos into little foam cups. My Spanish teacher had very few materials, but a can of Si Cafe always took pride of place on his table.

It´s a longstanding joke among coffee snobs that countries like Ecuador export all the good stuff and drink the shit that´s left over. I´ve had too many truly good coffees in most of Latin America to believe that, but I am amused to note that many Ecuadorians truly love instant coffee. The ultimate confirmation of that came half an hour ago, when Stacey, finally convinced by my Minerva-worship to buy a bag herself, made me ask the check out guy if he liked this coffee. The answer came loud and clear: well, it´s delicious. But Nescafe is better.