We landed in Lima at midnight after leaving Spokane around 5am. Seems like a long day flying. Crossed over the equator somewhere over Equador and magically went from winter to summer. Caught a taxi to our hotel and crashed for the night.

We had a day to check out Lima before the Coop Coffee meetings started so we hit the streets early with hopes of finding a decent cup of coffee and a fresh croissant. Within a few blocks of our hotel we found a great little café and got to practice finger pointing at the menu and our few words of Spanish. Note to travelers, learn the language before you go and use it. Especially if you’re from the United States. After a quick bite and some much needed coffee and fresh juice, we hit the streets. There is a lot of traffic in a city with over 8 million inhabitants and it comes at you in all directions. Add a unhealthy dose of noise and it makes for a pretty crazy scene. We cruised around for a few hours and decided it was siesta time so we headed back to the hotel. After some much needed rest, we took off walking again. We didn’t expect to find a shopping mall built on a cliff over looking the Pacific Ocean with a few hundred stores and restaurants, but we were new in town. What we did find was a good restaurant with a great view. Who knew Peruvian food was influenced by both the Italians and Asians? What we didn’t know was how different our food would change once we left the big city.

By the next morning most of the Coop members had arrived and our meetings were getting ready to start. It was great to see everyone and I’m proud we’re  part of this group. As a bonus, a number of our producer partners from Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Nicaragua joined us. The kind folks from Peru were our hosts. We were in for a great trip.

The primary focus of our meetings turned out to be how well fair trade is working for the farmers. I’m going to write a separate article addressing this subject, but lets just say that it isn’t working that well. I’m glad to say that as a rule, Doma Coffee pays at least 30% higher than fair trade prices (check out www.fairtradeproof.com).

The other part of the meeting was to elect new board members for Coop Sol, which is our Canadian version of Coop Coffees. Yours truly was elected to the board and  I am really excited about it. I was hoping it might include dual citizenship and health care, but no such luck. Jim and I both participate in various groups within the Coop (green bean group and now board of directors where one of our current projects is building a cupping lab in Montreal).

After the meeting, voting and eating, it was time to turn in. 5 am was going to come quick as we were heading to Pangoa. By 6 am we were all loaded on the bus and headed out of Lima towards the Andes and the Amazon. I could hardly wait.

The line forms here. Hopefully no other explanation is necessary.

Dominic using a new monetary system.

Coca tea. Yes please.

Top of the mountain, almost 16,500. In the old days, these were snow-capped.

No, this isn’t a shot of the Silver Valley. It’s worse. U S owned mines operating without any environmental restrictions.

That’s todays report. Next stop, Pangoa.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.