Part-Time Travelling

Ode to Coffee

Coffee fruit

On our last trip, we went to mostly tea-drinking areas, including New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and India. Even Tanzania, which grows some of the best coffee in the world, is inhabited by tea-drinkers. When we were able to find coffee in those countries, it was almost always instant. We had fortunate tasty exceptions in Vietnam and Egypt, but their rich, concentrated versions were a far cry from the Western cup of joe.

In Central America, they grow and drink a lot of coffee. In Nicaragua, though, most of the coffee is an instant sugary sludge poured out of thermoses into small Styrofoam cups. It is as ubiquitous as Starbucks and it got us through the mornings, but that´s about it.

Now in Honduras, they serve us cafe negro at every restaurante, comedor, and cafe. It´s a nice strong cup of coffee that beats the pants off of Maxwell House. The sugar is served on the side.

This morning, we were going to hop the border to El Salvador for a week or two. Then we had a cup of coffee and decided to stay in Honduras for a while longer.

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2 responses to “Ode to Coffee”

  1. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Yeah, the sad thing is, from what I’ve heard, a lot of Central American countries actually export their best coffee… in Costa Rica, the morning drink for those who couldn’t afford coffee was a spoonful of molasses (or something roughly equivalent so I’m calling it molasses) in a cup of hot water.
    But the coffee plantations are pretty…

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  2. Adam Avatar
    Adam

    We get the impression that most of it is exported, but enough is grown that the farmers have plenty of coffee to drink themselves. And some farmers only grow coffee for their own consumption. In regions where coffee is being grown (a lot of the places we have been), it is easy to get a good cup of coffee.

    A lot of the time it seems like the “beneficios” save coffee with more defects for local consumption. That’s not such a bad thing though as far as we can tell, and still tastes fine.

    Outside of the coffee areas though, especially in Nicaragua, the selection gets to that nasty sugary coffee sludge. Of course, a good cup of coffee seems to cost as much a bad cup of coffee, though recently we have found a lot of places where bottomless cups are pretty much gratis.

    Haven’t seen any molasses-y stuff, but we haven’t been exposed to the big city poor / super sketchy areas.

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