Coffee Fest and Guate the city

Reggaeton performance at CoffeeFest. Too much of it everywhere.

So, Guatemala City. Not exactly my cup of tea. But I was there for CoffeeFest. Get it?

I’m tired, so the only jokes that come might be really terrible.

Seriously though, I’ve lived in Lima, and I expected all of the noise, dirtiness, and chaos that I actually sort-of came to like in Peru. Guate has that, for sure, plus Lima’s love for reggaeton, which I could not and cannot come to appreciate, and then bastardizes it with some strange perversion of the American dream centered around two of my least favorite aspects of Amuhrica: malls and chain fast-food restaurants with supersized parking lots. With reggaeton. From walking through Zona 10 (the Zona Viva in Guate), I gathered it’s the collective Guatemala city dream to own a store in a mall, take your girlfriend on a date in a different mall that’s 4 blocks away, then dance to reggaeton on Calle 15, Zona 10. If David Byrne ever decided to make a sequel to True Stories, and felt like replacing all the awesome Talking Heads songs with Daddy Yankee, this must be the place.

Obviously I’m going to complain a lot in this entry (I couldn’t even avoid being gringo-ripped off for cab fares in Guate, which pissed me off to no end, since I take a bit of pride in bargaining skillz), so I’ll say that all in all, going to Guate for FEDEPMA was an overall positive and at times interesting, if often frustrating, experience.

After getting into the city on the chicken bus and making my way to a hostel near the airport (it’s pretty tough to find dirt cheap and safe options in Guate – many thanks to Stacy for helping me find the first night’s room over the phone since her guide book is way better than mine), I made it to CoffeeFest, albeit a bit later than I had hoped.

CoffeeFests are held in the US, and presumably in other parts of the world, and in Guate, it was held at the office of AnaCafé, the national coffee association. The fest, in addition to a strange exhibition area that really had very little to do with coffee, consisted of the national barista competition, a cooking competition utilizing coffee as an Iron Chef-like central ingredient, and the national cupping competition.

Cupping is a formalized way of tasting and comparing different coffees, and this competition was essentially a way for coffee geeks to battle it out to see who had the most refined palate and most highfalutin vocabulary for describing the variety of berry their coffee most closely resembles. I love coffee, and I do appreciate that cupping is important in the world of gourmet coffee, but I really don’t get the point of competing for the title of ultimate cupper. If you’re going to overcompensate, I figure there are way more interesting and more masculine ways than wearing a medal around your neck that essentially says “I have great taste buds, I´m so awesome.”

Anyways, I had the chance to not pay attention to the cupping and instead watch some baristas, including our friends Gersón and Nery from Fat Cat Coffee in Antigua, compete for the chance to go to Colombia for World Barista Championships. Also somewhat geeky, but whatever. The baristas had to prepare 4 espressos, 4 cappuccinos, and a signature drink in 15 minutes…don’t feel like explaining this anymore. Nery and Gersón unfortunately didn’t do as well as they would have hoped, so they didn’t make it to the finals.

Gersón pouring for the judges.

It was a good chance to hand out some samples of our coffee and talk with some of Guatemala’s best baristas and the judges, who will hopefully provide a bit of feedback on the beans, even if they’re not interested in buying any. The Belgian judge was as unwelcoming as a hard cobblestone on a low-spoke count wheel, but other than that they were good people who seemed genuinely interested in FEDEPMA, or at least acted like it. Gersón and Nery and their friend Frosty (he’s pretty pale by Guatemalan standards, and apparently used to be chubby) were great as always, and it was awesome to talk to Percy Ramírez and Charles Babinski from Intelligentsia. Doubtful our product quite reaches Intelli standards, and they already have direct trade agreements with at least 2 fincas in the country, but good contacts nonetheless.

And really, Guatemala City isn’t all that bad. Saturday happened to be the lighting of a huge fake Christmas tree sponsored by Gallo, the national cerveza. It was basically a giant street fair, and it probably was a good thing I wasn’t with Stacy, since I took full advantage of the opportunity to indulge in some highly questionable street food. Plus, before the Christmas tunes and Guatemalan Rockettes started (cue me leaving), there was a live performance by Malacates, the first semi-decent Guatemalan pop group I’ve heard since getting here. Emphasis on the semi, but definitely listenable, so a small victory I guess. For that night I switched to a hotel in Zona 1, which although a bit more dangerous than Zona 13, is also in the heart of the city rather than right near the airport, so I felt a bit less imprisoned by isolation, and had a good starting point for early market breakfast and shopping for a few necessities on Sunday morning.

And Frosty gave me a few pointers for places to check out. For one, he works at Bajo Fondo Funk, a great bar in the Zona Viva with a vibe somewhere between Black Cat Red Room and the Red Derby, owned by a musician in a funk band called Entre Todos. And Café Injerto, the café of Finca Injerto, an organic coffee farm in Huehuetenango that has won both Guatemalan and world Cup of Excellence awards. If you’re a coffee geek, their café in the city has 5 different ways of doing black coffee, including siphon. Pretty awesome.

Anyways, made it back to San Pedro on Sunday. There wasn’t a direct chicken bus, so I had to take a chicken bus part way, then two different microbuses (think minivans crammed with about 15 people, or if you’ve been to Lima, the combi. Not the least stressful trip home, but here it never is…hasta luego.