After an overnight bus trip through the Andes, we arrived at the bus station in La Merced, a gateway to jungle, trying to feel as awake as we thought we should for 11 o’clock in the morning. We knew we had to get our bearings and find our way to the home of Joel and Nathan, who live on a chacra, or coffee farm, far off of any paved roads. We no sooner stepped off the bus than we were welcomed by Alan, a brother of Nathan and Joel’s host mother, Carmen.

Following a mototaxi ride up the hill, he had us sitting in a café on the main square in town for a good cup of coffee, the crop for which the region is known. After eating a popular local breakfast, fried yuquitas with three dipping sauces (ocopa, huancaina, and guacamole), we stopped briefly at Chanchamayo Highland Coffee, a production plant and retail store where Joel and Nathan’s family sends its beans.

Then the adventure began. We knew that the guys lived somewhere along the road between La Merced and Villa Rica. In truth, if we had not had Alan along, we might never have found the place. The dirt road out of La Merced was rough, and thanks to an early morning rain, things turned rougher when we took a side road, maybe an hour later.

Our cab driver went over streams and straddled ridges to get us as deep into this jungle pass as we could get. Finally, he said that’s it: the cab could go no further. We grabbed bags and started walking. We walked uphill for the better part of an hour (pausing at places to watch butterflies or to learn the name of a plant or flower, and to sample a fruit that looked like an orange and tasted like a lime) until we came to the chacra of Carmen and Isidro.

The first sound we heard was a repeated loud bang, like a hammer pounding on tin. It turned out to be Joel hitting a tennis ball against the side of coffee storage shed. Next to him were carpets of pale yellow coffee beans set out to dry on the pavement. Decked out in boots, Nathan was keeping watch over the beans. Guard duty, he said.

Nathan and Joel have had a good introduction to the coffee production process. They’ve gone out to pick beans. They have hauled beans up to the drying beds. They have sorted red and green berries. Most of the beans here go to Highland, which exports coffee to Europe and elsewhere.

Carmen and Isidro soon welcomed us into their home, where they served a late lunch (our long trip was the reason the lunch was late) of chicken and potatoes and rice, with a side salad of tomatoes, onions, and lime dressing. They gave us a brief tour of the property, including a look at coffee plants, many of which are entering a resting phase.

The guys said they often start their day around 8, with a breakfast of rice with vegetables, or maybe potatoes, or spaghetti (bread is a luxury this far off the road). Always there is coffee, of late essencia from coffee beans grown on the chacra. They work different projects depending on the day. Afternoons they often take a run, up a hill for 20 minutes and then back down.

It’s dark by 6 p.m. The family, and the moths, gather in the kitchen, where there’s a solitary light bulb powered by a car battery. Supper arrives around 7. Soon after supper, Carmen and Isidro head to bed.

Joel and Nathan will read in their room by candlelight for a while, and maybe play a game. Joel had made a checker board, using a slice of tree trunk and pink chalk he found in their bedroom, with coffee beans as checker pieces; then Carmen brought out a store-bought board that had been in storage. “And we’ll beat anybody in gin rummy,” Joel said. “We’ve been practicing up.”

With about an hour of daylight left, we started walking downhill to find our cab driver, hoping that he was still waiting (he was). He eased us out the bumpiest dirt road to the main dirt, where in the dark we caught a kombi van for the ride to Villa Rica. When we arrived, Michelle and Tyler were waiting for us. We finished the evening with a pollo a la braza and Inca Kola supper, followed by pastries from a shop down the street (alfajor cookies with manjar blanco are recommended).