I Though I knew about coffee

A cup of coffee had been part of my life for years. It took one afternoon in Antigua to realize how much I had never stopped to notice.

I drink coffee every single day.

It’s part of my mornings, my conversations, my meetings, my afternoons. I’ve had countless cups of Guatemalan coffee and, somewhere along the way, I think I started believing I knew coffee pretty well.

Turns out, I mostly knew how to drink it.

Last Saturday, I went to Antigua to try La Cobija’s Coffee Experience. I went as the founder, wanting to experience it myself before asking anyone else to do the same.

I left with a new favorite experience. But more than that, I left looking differently at something that has been in front of me almost every day of my life.

Gaby was the one guiding us that afternoon.

We smelled the coffee before tasting it. We learned about different filtering methods and how each one can change what eventually ends up in your cup. We tasted the house coffee liqueur, mixed with Quezalteca, a very Guatemalan touch that somehow made the whole thing feel even more like home.

And then we sat down to taste.

There was coffee, of course, alongside an incredible dish prepared by Adrián, a chef and someone who genuinely loves what happens in a kitchen. But somewhere between tasting, laughing and talking, I realized I had stopped thinking about the experience as something I was there to evaluate.

I was simply enjoying it.

And then Gaby started telling us her story.

She told us how she found her way into the world of coffee and how, unexpectedly, coffee changed the direction of her life. What began as something she encountered became something she wanted to understand. She started learning from people who knew more, studying different methods, paying attention to flavors and discovering how much could exist inside something as seemingly simple as a cup of coffee.

And suddenly, we weren’t only talking about coffee anymore.

We were talking about people.

About the people who teach what they know. The people who decide to learn. The people who cook. The people who grow something, roast something, prepare something or spend years becoming really good at something they care about.

About the unexpected places life takes us and the people we meet along the way.

That might have been my favorite part.

Because I have lived in Guatemala my whole life. Coffee isn’t something exotic to me. It has always been here. I drink it almost every day. I know its smell in the morning and the way a conversation somehow feels better with a cup sitting between two people.

And maybe that familiarity is exactly why I had stopped wondering about it.

I knew the coffee.

I hadn’t stopped to think about all the stories around it.

That afternoon reminded me that behind the things we consume so casually are people with names, faces, dreams and stories of their own. And sometimes, taking the time to know them changes the way we experience something we thought we already knew.

Now when I think about that afternoon, I remember the coffee.

But I also remember Gaby telling us how she found her place in this world. I remember Adrián and the food he created. I remember the laughter around the table. I remember smelling, tasting, asking questions and realizing there was still so much I didn’t know.

Maybe that’s why this became my favorite La Cobija experience.

Not because I learned how to taste coffee differently.

But because it reminded me why La Cobija exists in the first place.

To slow down enough to notice what’s already there.

To get curious about the things we think we know.

And to remember that Guatemala is not only made of beautiful places, traditions, food or coffee.

It is made of people.

And sometimes, all it takes is sitting down for a cup of coffee to meet them.

With love,

Dani