Coffee on the Road.: A short History of the Search

 Taking a sun break from Victoria's Coffee Shops

coffee vendor in Cartagena

No coffee shop posts for a while, because in January 2011, I left for a month of sunshine and sea in the Caribbean. Finding decent coffee when travelling is very difficult, even in the best coffee producing countries.  This is because their best coffee is often one of their main exports and the locals are reduced to drinking Nescafe. The only place I could count on getting good coffee while travelling was in Colombia. There it is sold on the street out of giant thermoses  in little tiny cups the size of shot glasses .  It is like ingesting pure caffeine!  As a result of my fear of not getting a decent cuppa in the morning,  I travel with my own coffee maker and coffee.

 the very first coffee maker

My very first Bodum Coffee Press
I started doing this way back 1997 when I went to Australia, with my favorite one cup, glass Bodum.  I had a feeling that British born Australia might be good on tea, but not so good on Coffee.  I found that a large Italian population had made a difference, but while good coffee was available in large centres, not so much in smaller ones.  So I made good use of it for my morning coffee, until tragedy struck.  While waiting for a bus in Adelaide to take me to Alice Springs, my backpack fell over, and I heard that unmistakable crunch of breaking glass.  I was devastated

the Alice Springs coffee maker

 I checked into the hostel in Alice, and was due to leave on a camping trip to Uluru the next morning...with no coffee maker! I was sure it would be given Nescafe in the morning. No way! I was told there was a Woolworth in town, so an understanding Aussie hosteller with a car offered to drive me.  It was almost closing time, and the guard at the door didn't want to let us in, but I pleaded my case, and told him I only needed ONE thing.  I ran around the store, looking for the right department, found it, couldn't find  what I wanted, and nearly despaired, but my 'driver' friend shouted she had found one, and my sanity was saved.  It was a slightly different style, but in a way better, as the glass was somewhat protected by a metal frame. My morning coffee was assured. That same coffee maker travelled with me to China in 1997, and to Mongolia in 1998...both countries where bringing coffee and a coffee maker was indeed a necessity. 

 The Plastic Coffee Press

 In 1999 I spent time in Nicaragua and Mexico. Despite being coffee countries, it was hard to find good coffee at that time.  That year I discovered my first one cup plunger thermos style coffee maker.   The first one on the market was plastic and I was delighted, because it  avoided the breakage problem.  It took me through trips to Central and South America in 2001 and 2003. Unfortunately it only lasted a couple of trips, and had to be replaced once because with constant use, the plastic began to sag from the boiling water.  But then the plastic ones became unavailable.They were replaced by the larger, heavier metal ones that were just too bulky and heavy for this backpacker.


My next great find was in a camping store, where
 I found a one cup metal Bodum!  This had to be the travel coffee maker of my dreams, and it went with me to West Africa in 2007 and island hopping in the Caribbean in 2005.    I am always searching for travel gear perfection, and I found it again in the camping department. I felt I had found the ultimate travel coffee maker. It is a cup shaped, metal, thermos, plunger coffee maker/cup, and with the right coffee, makes a perfect cup that you can drink out of as well.  It is the size of a normal cup,is light weight and has a handle.  All you need is boiling water - which if they are offering you Nescafe or tea, comes to the table in a thermos.   Before I left Senegal,  it was gifted to a wonderful French couple who had 'rescued' me during an airport meltdown.  They also decried the unavailability of anything but Nescafe while travelling and admired my wonderful 'cup' so I gave it to  them to thank them for all their kindness.  I knew I could replace it when I got home.

The new cup went to Churchill Manitoba (2007) and Tahiti in 2008 .  While Tahiti is a French country, and one could expect good coffee, I had been fooled once before in West Africa.  I had expected that former French colonies like Burkina Faso and Senegal would be 'safe', and only carried enough coffee to get me through British born Ghana... even stupidly leaving some behind as I lightened my pack load.  But unbelievably, there was nothing but Nescafe wherever I went, and because i gave my coffee away,  I had to switch to tea.  Luckily, I didn't really need it in Tahiti.

Here's a tip to use when you are truly desperate for a cup of coffee, and there is only Nescafe available I learned it  from an Israeli while travelling in Europe back in 1961 - the year I learned to drink coffee.

Put a teaspoonful of the dreaded Nescafe into your cup, add one or two teaspoons of sugar.  Then put in JUST ENOUGH water to dampen it, and using the spoon 'whip it' around until it is a thick, caramel coloured glob in the bottom.  Then gradually add boiling water, stir, and add milk if you want.  It isn't 'real' coffee but for some strange reason it does something to the Nescafe to make it palatable.  

Which brings me to my last trip back to the Caribbean in 2010.  I had heard that StarBucks had developed a fantastic, new, instant coffee.  They were giving out free samples, so I took some home to test.  Not bad at all.  Not as good as the real thing, but definitely doable while travelling.  So I packed up enough for a month (they come in little individual packets), and used my immersion heater to boil water in my thermos cup. Then all I had to do was add the instant coffee, and I was set for the morning!

I spent a week on the Windsurf, a luxury sailing ship, from Barbados to a number of islands.

The coffee was so so, and i beefed it up with my SB instant.  It was too hot for coffee any time other than for breakfast, and I opted for drinking great Caribbean beer instead during the day.  
 http://www.windstar-cruises-luxury-lines.com/windsurf.htm

Friendly French couples seem to turn up in my travels and I connected with another pair on the last island I visited, Carriacou, a small island off of Grenada. I met this couple, also suffering from true coffee deprivation.  They tried out my SB instant, and it passed muster, so when I left I gave them all my remaining packets.  Travel blog of this trip can be located at one of my other blogs... but so far, it is still incomplete.

http://misselaineous-travels.blogspot.com/