by Nate Stevens, Customer Accounts Representative

In April of this year, Scott Patterson and I had the privilege of visiting our farmer friends at the PANGOA coop, and also made a brief visit to the newly registered members of Cooperative Coffees in Pichinaki, Peru. Following is a travel journal recounting my observations and experiences on this amazing journey. I had only been out of the US one time previously, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, so this was a very powerful learning experience for me. This article is part 1 of a 2 part series. In Part One, I give a journal of our trip through the Andes on the Peru Central Highway. In Part Two, I will recount my experiences with the members of the coop in PANGOA. 

04-24-06 8:00AM
Esperanza (general manager of coop de PANGOA) and a driver picked Scott and I up from our hotel room in Lima about 30 minutes ago. We are in a car on the way to PANGOA. American music is playing on the radio, Monday morning traffic everywhere...We are on a 12-hour ride through up and over the Andes and down into the tropical coffee growing regions on the other side of this awesome mountain range. Lima is huge!! I am told 13 million people call this mega-city home!! Traffic is CRAZY! It's a free for all, watch out bikers and pedestrians, and the exhaust is thick and smoggy. We are passing trucks full of bananas, moto taxis with their passengers going to do daily activities, roadside stands selling mangos, bananas, snacks, breakfast, fruit juice, lots of Coca-Cola. Busy city life here, I wonder if the hustle and bustle of it all ever grinds on people the way it does on me sometimes....

Just stopped at a convenience store and switched drivers (we will have 4 different drivers before the journey is complete). I cannot believe there are not more crashes on the road, bikes weave through, the exhaust is nauseating, thick fumes and smog hangs over the city like a soggy blanket. We just passed a shack that was the business of a romance fortuneteller. A moment later, Esperanza tells me maybe I will meet a beautiful Peruvian lady and stay here! I am wishing I could communicate with her, this will not be the last time on this trip that I wished I was able to speak the local language.

Something that strikes me is all the Western styles down here -- advertising, products, Coca-Cola everywhere, the clothing. So familiar and homogenized, it looks the same as downtown LA in many ways. This city is huge, rolls on forever. People live in any place they can. We just passed a neighborhood of shacks, some made of tin, others of cardboard and salvaged materials that jutted out from the face of a nearly vertical side of a mountain. The USA seems so groomed to me in comparison, so antiseptic, so scrubbed.

As we drive on, I have a thought about gasoline, petroleum, and how the entire world runs on this stuff at the present. Down here the emissions are heavy and black, gas trucks everywhere, vehicles of all shapes and sizes, all powered on petroleum, and nothing close to the emission standards in the US, which isn't saying much anyways. There are sporadic bicycle carts and vendors, and personal bikes are here and there, but most people are going around packed like sardines in cars, buses, and moto taxi. We stop to fuel up at a station where diesel, gasoline, kerosene, and natural gas are all available.

As we make our way out of the city and into the foothills of the Andes, I slowly let the hustle and bustle fall behind me. The air becomes cleaner, more refreshing, and beautiful foliage of this new topography appears out the window. Cacti, beautiful blooming flowers, and unfamiliar trees appear as we start to climb into the mountains. I feel an exhilaration come over me as I let the crazy city fall behind me and start this amazing adventure into the mountains.

04-24-06 11:30AM
We just stopped at a really pretty café on the side of the road to have a light breakfast. I had local fish and french-fried potatoes, which hit the spot. I said I had a little bit of an upset stomach, and so Esperanza ordered me coca tea, she says it is the medicine of the Andes, and it settles my stomach nicely. She also tells me that coca is used to aid digestion, increase alertness, and to help the lungs adjust to the thin air in the high altitude.  We get back in the car after a brief rest and refreshments. How funny to think I could get prison time for bringing a tea-bag full of a wonderful medicinal plant back into the States with me!

04-24-06 3:33PM
Traveling the Central Highway through the mountains, we just crossed a river where a bridge had been washed out by a landslide just the day before yesterday. Beautiful jungle air fresh with the scent of thousands of flowers and trees is blowing in my window, so fresh and clean. I now really understand why they call the South American rain forests the lungs of our planet -- this air is wonderful and pure! I pass so many beautiful faces along this road, mothers carrying babies on their backs and baskets of food and laundry on their heads, heading to the river that the road follows to do their daily laundry. We just switched drivers again in the last town about 15 minutes ago, got in a more comfortable car, a Toyota. The sun is amazing, warm and bright, passing waterfalls and more moto-taxis, fruit stands, palm trees, ferns. Our new driver is not messing around, this man truly understands that time is money. A few times with this driver, I let out a nice healthy "Oh S#$%"

04-24-06 4:45PM
We just had a fresh fruit salad & guanabana juice at a little place in Chanchamaya, a small mountain town in the central Andes. There was a beautiful town square, bright with flowers and the town was alive with the daily routine. I bought a mounted spider for my son that had a leg-span of about 10 inches and a body the size of my fist. I hope I do not run into one of these on this trip.

04-24-06 5:45PM
OK, I have been sitting for most of 2 days now, and its getting old. Our plane flight was pretty much a full day, and now I have been in this car for 10 hours. Ouch. We are almost there, about another 2 hours to PANGOA. As we drive I romanticize about living here. All the earthy huts built of palm fronds and bamboo that line the highway have a mystic quality about them, looks like the Blue Lagoon to me, but that is my Western Disney-Land mind that is being appealed to. I wonder if the families who live there find it sexy, adventurous, and garden of Eden style living like it is always portrayed in the movies back home. I doubt it. Time seems to have a different quality here along this road, slower, more peaceful, and I like it. We are passing Pichinaki, where we will stay for a day at the end of our stay in PANGOA.

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