Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

A Gift of Coffee

To me coffee is coffee. If I had told you I could distinguish between brands, you’d be right if you didn’t believe my words. Obvious to only a few, some brands has to taste better than others. It must be so, since my son and husband, who are coffee enthusiasts, can carry a conversation about coffee for hours.

I started to reconsider the idea of coffee also, when we were gifted with a small bag of coffee beans from Villa Rica, Pasco, Peru, famous for its coffee plantations and for being an attractive tourist spot. Our friends, who gave us the coffee, told us that Villa Rica gets its name from a famous volcano with a lake in its crater. Also, its very spot in the middle of the selva on high altitudes of the Andes and the heat and humidity of the region add to the superior quality of the product.

The friends, who visited Villa Rica, say that to go there from Lima is a major trek, which involved –for them- more than eight hours of following a risky asphalt road that spiraled and twisted with dangerous bends until they reached their destination. I was surprised to hear that they were given a plantation tour and were even allowed to pick a few beans each, each bean bright red in color. They said that the city was colorful and quite civilized with some modern facilities and very exotic Indians, missionaries, local population, and tourists.

I don’t know if, just to get coffee, I would dare to climb high altitudes again as I could do in young age, but the fragrance of the coffee from Villa Rica is something else and it was a memorable and very thoughtful gift, indeed.

The aroma of Villa Rica coffee enters one’s nostrils and doesn’t want to leave. What’s more, hours after we brewed it, the house smelled of coffee.