Café Andino

Café Andino began in 1997 when an American expatriate, newly arrived in Huaraz, rented a bare cement room at a time when the only coffee sold locally was instant Nescafé — a strange gap in a country that grows some of South America's most prized beans. The café's own tagline, 'often imitated, but never duplicated, since 1997,' points to how thin the competition still was when it opened. Since 2001 the operation has roasted organic beans daily on-site, buying directly from growers in Rodríguez de Mendoza and Huánuco rather than through a wholesaler, which keeps the sourcing traceable to two named growing regions instead of a generic 'Peruvian coffee' label. Huaraz sits at the foot of the Cordillera Blanca, and Café Andino's location, at Jr. Lucar y Torre 530, has made it a fixture for climbers and trekkers passing through before or after time in the mountains, open daily except Sunday from eleven to ten. The original cement-room conditions — peeling walls, uneven plumbing — are part of the café's own telling of its start, not a hidden detail. It has grown from that improvised room into a daily-roasting operation without relocating its identity as a trekkers' meeting spot.