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I have never been to Salta, but torrontés might change that. The white grape, which I first tasted in Mendoza last year, has quickly become my favorite white. It’s the one wine I pair with almost anything now: sushi, cheese, paté, duck, grilled shrimp, and even fish tacos. It serves as a cleanser and can calm down your palate with spicy Asian and Latin foods. On a sunny day, a chilled glass of torrontés – with its hints of grapefruit, elderflower, and apricot – is as smooth and refreshing as any wine I’ve ever had. It’s the same feeling as cracking open a frosty cold beer after an exhausting day.

In 2004, less than 30,000 cases of torrontés were exported to the U.S. In 2010, that number ballooned to 231,000 cases. While I generally bring back a few bottles from Argentina every time I’m there, I’ve been seeing more and more bottles show up in my neighborhood wine shop. I’m particularly fond of O. Fournier’s Urban Uco brand, which has popped up everywhere and I can usually snag a bottle for around . There are better labels of course, but year after year Urban Uco is consistently good. It’s reliable. I’d bet on it if it was in a race.

While the majority of torrontés I’ve tasted has been from Mendoza, but where the grape thrives is in Argentina’s cold, wind swept north near Salta. The high altitude region is a long way away from Buenos Aires or even Santiago, Chile. It’s closer to Bolivia than La Boca. Salta’s torrontés aren’t as flashy as those further south. They’re crisper. More delicate. Richer. I think a glass might be ideal with a Salta empanada. Maybe on a sidewalk café on Calle Balcarce, as the sun is setting and the afternoon crowds are beginning to gather. I guess I’ll never know until I get there.

New World Review

Moving deeper into the mountains from Ponce, sticking to the famed Ruta Panorámica, Puerto Rico’s landscape takes a drastic turn. Buick size ferns grow out into the road and patches of green bamboo form a canopy over it. Avocados and oranges fall from trees and rot on the pavement, filling the air with a beautifully pungent aroma. The chirps of the coqui are constant. I have flashbacks of Dominica and Costa Rica.

In Jayuya, I get lost looking for my parador. I stop four times and each time I’m told something different. Jayuya isn’t big, but five different highways meet here and twist in a maze of one ways. A kid at the gas station draws me a map with loops and no’s and x’s where the road would end. I lose the trail but pick up the familiar Parador road markers.

Hacienda Gripiñas is a 150-year-old Spanish farmhouse that has been the social center of Jayuya, a coffee plantation, and the home of the founder of the village. The building maintains the history in clapboard walls, red tile roof, balconies overlooking coffee fields & trees. Wooden shutters are all open so the citrus scented air blows throughout the creaky old building. My room on the second level has a rocking chair, beamed ceilings, and a rose bush molded on the drywall. In the dining room the walls are filled with the linear notes of criollo folk songs. As they make my dinner the women, who are dressed in plantation style uniforms and aprons, sing from the kitchen.

“Al-go par-a to-mar,” my waiter asks in a tranquillo, cordillera twang. “Qu-er-ies ar-roz con hab-i-chue-las o pla-ta-nos ma-dur-os?” He says “Buen pro-ve-cho,” as my Asopao is served. The entire time he has this wise smile on his face like he knows some secret to living.

The route through the cordillera is pure coffee land. Puerto Rico was once a coffee powerhouse and its shade grown beans competed with Hawaii’s Kona and Jamaica’s Blue Mountain. On becoming a commonwealth they lost their touch, but appear to be back on the rise. After a quick stop at some Taino petroglyphs I go to Hacienda San Pedro, a coffee plant, just outside of Jayuya. The bodega wasn’t open yet, but the guys at the plant didn’t mind if I wanted to look around. It was more industrial than I expected, so I headed west to Hacienda Patricia, a century old artisanal plant that hand picks and sun dries their beans. A younger man peaks his head out a window when I pull up.

“Can I buy coffee here?” I ask.

He waves me in. I enter a concrete room with a table where there was just a sealed plastic bin and a scale. He opens the bin and the scent of the Arabica wafts through the air. Why don’t they serve this in the hotels? I could taste it without tasting it. At a pound, it wasn’t cheap. He weighed it out, ground it right there, and sealed and stickered the bag. Walking out he asks if I want to take a look around. We go to a room with newly picked green and red beans and then a darker room with drying racks. We step out on a walkway, which sticks out of the side of a hill with a full panoramic view of the lush green mountains, where they place the racks to dry. If quality were related to the beauty of the place it is grown and processed, this would win awards.

I pull over at Maricao’s central plaza to ask a wrinkled old woman in a floral dress for directions. Even before I could ask her directions for Hacienda Juanita, she asked “De donde eres, Papi?” When I tell her she laughs. Then she points me up over the hill.
Hacienda Juanita is a working 24-acre coffee plantation. Like Hacienda Gripiñas, the cooler climate here brings weekend travelers who come to escape the heat of the cities and hike in the nearby Maricao State Forest or kick back in their pool or tennis courts. Their dining room, another of the Mesones, serves criollo dishes, using mostly the fruit and vegetables found on their property, that follows the original 18^th century plantation recipes. For the second night in a row I order asopao. The dish is Puerto Rico’s version of chicken soup that mixes rice with sofrito and a list of optional additions like pigeon peas, olives, capers, bay leaves, achiote, and oregano. For the second night in a row it is different.

At check-in they gave me a hand drawn map to a nearby waterfall, Salto de Curet. I have to follow a twisting unpaved mountain road through coffee plantations and then park my car in a dirt lot. The map says to follow an unmarked trail and cross a small stream three times and then turn and walk up the stream until reaching the waterfall. After about twenty sweaty minutes I find a clearing and a breathtaking 50-foot cascade and emerald pool below it. Looking in my bag I realize my bathing suit is still in my room. That pool looked refreshing though. I take a look around and no one is anywhere in sight. The hills are impassable on every side except the way I came. Being a Wednesday morning, no one is coming anyway. When else would I have a chance to do this? I strip down and dive in. It’s bone chillingly cold, but undeniably cleansing.

At dinner, I ask my waitress Rosa if there is a story behind the Pastelón de Guineos Juanita I’m eating. I hadn’t seen anything quite like it before. It’s a sort of corned beef with peas and corn with a bottom and top layer of soft guineos maduros. It looks like a slice of pie.

“A story?” She thinks for a moment. “Well, this is the only place you will find that dish in Puerto Rico. Everyone else uses platano, but we’ve used the guineos ever since the restaurant began. They’re sweeter.”

So there is a story.

IF YOU GO:
Hacienda Juanita
Style: The grandeur of an original Nineteenth century plantation. Location: A 24-acre fruit and coffee plantation in the western highlands. Accommodation: 21 typically decorated rooms with poster beds. Rates: From 7 per night. Amenities: Pool, bar, tennis courts, access to hiking trails, and their own Meson Gastronomico. Contact: 787-836-2550; www.haciendajuanita.com.

Hacienda Gripiñas
Style: A 150-year-old Spanish building and village social center. Location: In the Central Cordillera’s coffee growing center of Jayuya. Accommodation: 19 rooms with mountain views. Rates: From 5 in low season (5 in high). Amenities: Historic plantation style complex with two pools, quaint restaurant, and trails through fruit trees. Contact: 787/828-1717; www.haciendagripinas.com.

New World Review

Charlie Sheen had been on ‘Two and a Half Men’ for eight seasons. (Riccard S. Savi / Getty Images)

Warner Bros. Television says it has fired Charlie Sheen from the hit sitcom “Two and a Half Men.”

The studio that produces the CBS series said the decision was made after “careful consideration.”

Sheen’s erratic personal life had prompted Warner to suspend production on the show for the season, and Sheen in return had been waging an angry media campaign against the show’s producers.

No decision has been made on the future of the series, Warner Bros. said in a statement.

Palm Beach Entertainment: Events, movies, restaurants, nightlife & more | pbpulse.com

After almost a month of working in the community (two months for the other volunteers) it is time to wrap up what we’ve accomplished and our thoughts about them.   We had our last day in the community on Thursday the 5^th.  Once again, I will focus on the Piassaba group as the other volunteers touch other topics.

One of our biggest goals was creation of a broom factory to house machinery and supplies for the company.  While the factory was not quite set up at time of our departure, we were able to see the first machines set in place and, excitingly, the partial manufacture of the first brooms!  We held a small ceremony in which a substantial portion of the company associates were present, and Lucia, John, and the head of the company talked a bit about the future of the company.  The brooms were made, the ribbon was cut, and drinks were handed around in celebration.  We look forward to pictures as they finish the machinery setup and the construction of a pavilion to complete the factory.

We were also able to create for them a simple logo and present it to them for their approval.  Upon approval, we set about trying to find an iron hot-stamp to incinerate the logo into the wooden “taco” (attachment point for the bristles) of the broom.  Tarapoto did not have the amenities for such a stamp so we left the logo with Lucia to create from iron workshops in Lima.  Meanwhile, we took the initiative to paint a colorful version of the logo onto the front of the first building on their plot of land, and I must say I was quite pleased with its quality!  We hope it will serve as a new face for the company and potential visitors to the community.

Looking back, its heartwarming to think how all the work from the past month came together to help this community get their first communal business started.  From attending meetings and planning, to painting and gathering wood from the forest, and everything in between, I can say for certain that helping this community has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.  Most especially, I will never forget the relationships forged with community members.  I await my departure, but I also leave a piece behind to always remember the impact I made and, more impressionably, the impact made on me.

Giving a Living to a Life in the Rainforests of Peru

Our next Bike Show will be at The Huntsman Pub in Eridge, near Tunbridge Wells on Sunday 25th July 2010. Oppostite Eridge Station.

Time: 11am to 5.00pm

Relax with a glass of wine or a cold beer and find out more details on our fantastic Peru bike tours!

Address: http://www.thehuntsman.net/

Don’t Miss out!

PERU TOURS

“Aloofness out and go to work”
“Give *them* a break”

I LOVE IT!

Thank you Abraham for your wisdom and willingness to share with all of us.

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By Tony Darrington Few people will immediately associate The Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) with Miraflores – more likely it will be linked to the Parque Universitario downtown  or the huaca-strewn campus alongside Lima’s “longest road” – the Avenida Universitaria. However, the UNMSM does have a solitary outpost ‘by the sea,’ wedged between [...]
Peruvian Times

By far one of the greatest games ever made…

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