Cafecito, anyone?

I’ve never been a huge coffee drinker. Even in college, if I absolutely needed a caffeine jolt at any point in the day, the drink I ordered was something along the lines of one part coffee to two parts milk and flavored syrup.

Now that I live in Ecuador, Land of the Early Risers, I have been forced to give up my nocturnal ways and find myself getting out of bed before seven in the morning (read: definitely need coffee).



And it’s not just me; coffee is an integral part of daily life here. It is both a dire necessity and a social practice. When someone offers you a cafecito, you say, Why yes, thank you! and can expect to receive coffee, tea, or hot chocolate - but usually it is coffee.

Strangely, the coffee that is widely available and commonly consumed in Ecuadorian households is not what you might expect in a country that has all the right conditions for producing a top quality product. Certain regions and cities - Loja, for example - are known to produce greater quantities and better quality beans. In general, however, poor harvesting and processing practices prevent this country’s coffee from reaching its highest potential. I do hear about efforts from the Agricultural Department to focus on education and adherence to high standards (and some PCVs who are pitching in along these lines), but in the meantime, the cooperatives and organic farmers who currently produce high quality specialty beans export most of their product. Wah-wah. That leaves us with powdered coffee, the most prevalent of which is NesCafé, followed by a couple other household name brands from Ecuador and Colombia.

I don’t think your average José is as disappointed as I am by the whole coffee situation here, and maybe you’ll see why when I divulge The Ecuadorian Coffee Recipe:

1 – Take a mug of boiling-lava-hot water
2 – Stir in one spoonful of coffee powder
3 – Dump in THREE HEAPING SPOONFULS of sugar

Presto, cafecito!

I accepted a cup of coffee once from my host family and nearly didn’t live to tell the tale; these people really know how to rev your central nervous system into overdrive. After that I took to drinking the stuff black, having decided it was worth the risk of offending my hosts. They were not in the least bit offended – in fact, they were rather entertained – but they deduced incorrectly from this my idiosyncrasy that I did not like sugar at all.

I quickly put them to rights for fear of missing out on such delectable treats as flan, and manjar, and flan. Because that woulda been a real shame.