From the tree to the cup: a specialty coffee tour in El Salvador
The small coffee-growing town of Juayúa sits cupped in the foothills between western El Salvador's Sierra Apaneca Ilamatepec mountains and its volcanic ring. This is one of several stops along the Routa de las Flores - a picturesque meander through weekend food markets, waterfalls, hot springs and tropical vegetation. The town itself is scarcely visible from perspectives above - if not for the blanched white church and spire pressing obstinately out of the canopy (home to the famous Black Christ statue, carved in the late 16th century). This is El Salvador’s most prominent coffee-growing region and for us, a paradisiacal black hole that we entered fancying ourselves savvy coffee lovers, and exited realizing we didn’t know diddly.
We toured Cesar Magaña’s hillside coffee planation, where he lives and works, cultivating beans for specialty markets abroad, and roasting his own brand for local distribution - Lechuza it's called, Spanish for owl. The scenery, the education and, of course, the tasting were a fitting introduction to this bountiful, complicated, promising country, El Salvador.
