Flavoured Coffee

I've just received some flavoured Colombian coffee samples from Cherizena (www.cherizena.co.uk). They've recently launched their blueberry cream coffee, and I was dying to try it - love anything blueberry! They also sent vanilla nut flavour and their chocolate and raspberries flavour. All smell gorgeous, although the blueberry and vanilla ones smell slightly sickly, if only because I associate those aromas with very sweet syrups. But here's the beauty of these coffees; I really enjoy having syprups, such as hazelnut, in coffee - especially iced coffee - but I can't bare sugar in white coffee. The syrups are always so sweet, which ruins the whole effect for me, but with these flavoured coffees, you get the taste but don't have to endure sweetness. Brilliant!



The chocolate and raspberries variety smells the most delicious to me, but so far I have only tried the blueberry cream. It was a lovely drink in its own right; you can still enjoy the coffee itself, but the blueberry is satisfyingly strong and leaves a very nice taste in your mouth. You need to be in an indulgent blueberry coffee mood rather than an ordinary coffee mood to enjoy it fully, but I'll definitely be drinking this delight again. Mmm the kitchen smells damn good now, too! I can't wait to try the other flavours, but I've had rather a lot of caffeine already today.

Cherizena make their flavoured coffees simply by soaking robust Arabica Colombian coffee beans in flavour-infused oil, then leaving them to dry naturally. They also sell speciality and rare coffees, without the flavourings.

Thanks to Embratur

...for sending me a mini Brazilian food journey, when they heard about my distressing tale, below.

I got some malty Palma Louca lager, some lovely smooth, chocolaty ground coffee (Taylors of Harrogate's Café Brasilia), and some Guarana soft drinks, which remind me of coach trip service station stops in the Amazon. Plus some recipes and the photos from a foodie trip around Brazil. I loved the beer and the coffee, but the trip pics just made me jealous!


Thanks, guys! :)

BRRRRAAAASSSIIIIIIIIWWW!!! (Brazil) 1st stop, Bagé

The bus slowly drove away from our Wild West town, trundling leisurely down the dirt road, past the border without stopping… we were there! We’d made it to Brazil!

After a short while, the bus rolled onto the smooth tarmac of the Brazilian highway. The prairie landscape continued, and two hours later we entered Bagé.

It was late afternoon, but still hot and very sticky in the town centre. It could have been a town anywhere, with shady squares, old stone buildings, and modern, scruffy-looking department stores. We were relieved to get to bank machines and internet cafés, and found the coach ticket office.

We’d planned to head straight up north, cross-country, to go to the Iguaçu falls, but there was no bus route to take us that way. We’d have to go East, to the nearest big city, Porto Alegré, to catch a connection. With our bus leaving the next afternoon, helpful locals directed us to a cheapish hotel.

Our spacious room at City Hotel looked out over the hazy rooftops, and we were exceedingly pleased to take off our sweaty clothes, have a shower, and put on clean clothes for the FIRST TIME on our trip! It was the first time it had been hot enough to wear anything other than our only warm outfits.


The view from our City Hotel window

We headed out for the evening, first of all stopping for a beer. We bought our drinks from a kiosk in a restful square, and sat at plastic tables. We were so excited that we were actually in Brazil, and the palm trees and warmth enhanced the satisfaction.

Bagé is a real backwater country town. Most people seem to be pretty impoverished, and we were very noticeable as strangers. Later on the trip, Brazilians were amazed that we'd been there (which made us feel like explorers, whilst they were just perplexed at why the hell we'd wanted to go there). We loved it. The locals were a colourful mix – not just in terms of the complete melting pot of Hispanic, white, black and everything in between, but also their clothes tended to be brightly coloured.

This is where we first noticed the female fashion for leggings (enhancing generally very large arses), teamed with huge, chunky platforms and piles of cheap bling. The large arses themselves are the fashion and without one, you just don’t have sex appeal. A couple of boys dressed like 50 Cent limped shadily about. Black and hispanicky-looking cowboys chinked around in their spurs, dressed in beautiful primary-coloured gaucho outfits.

I was mesmerised by the gauchos, who seemed to come from another world and era. Well they were mainly quite old, so sadly maybe Brazil is indeed loosing them to the past. But anyway, their fancy gathered trousers were tucked into knee-high leather boots, with immaculate shirts and string ties on top. Embroidered jackets and Brazilian cowboy hats finished off the look. Each cowboy had his own coordinated colour scheme.

After our beer, we walked around the town centre for ages, looking for somewhere to eat. There wasn’t much choice. There didn’t seem to be an eating out culture. We finally found a pizzeria, which was more expensive and clinical-looking than we would have liked. Bittencourt Pizzeria was empty when we got there, because we were rather early – we’d had a long day and hadn’t eaten since the border bread that morning.
The theme of the restaurant was that you pay one (big) price, and then you can choose whichever pizzas you want, or wait for the staff to come round with slices of all different ones. We thoroughly enjoyed gorging ourselves on the tasty pizzas, which were not amazing, but had been cooked in a proper pizza oven, from fresh dough. They served sweet pizzas for dessert.


Pizzaiolos at Bittencourt Pizzeria

As the restaurant filled up with diners, I began to uncomfortably realize that although most of Bagé’s population was quite dark, everyone in the restaurant was pale. I started to feel like a stupid rich bitch just by being in there, and got quite upset about the striking race divides between rich and poor. I’d have to get used to this…

When we left the restaurant, it was dark, and the streets were buzzing with people. We walked back towards the hotel, popped in to the hotel bar for a couple of flavoured vodkas, and then strolled the streets to take in the lively atmosphere. Students were touting for cash for the new term, and gangs of kids hung out around little food kiosks that had set up along the pavements - this was the local eating out culture. It was our first evening in Brazil, and it seemed that Brazil was brilliant!

Next Day:

The next morning, we had a several hours to kill before our bus to Porto Alegré, so we had great fun drinking milky coffees in the square and discreetly taking pictures of each other in an attempt to snap the gauchos in the background – people kept warning us to look out for dodgy people (by tapping their noses and raising their eyebrows) – we were being watched, so we didn’t want to act like even more obvious tourists by asking the cowboys to pose for the camera. Actually, people were staring a lot, and we did feel like targets, but what could we do, other than be careful?




We bought some delicious rotisserie chicken to eat on the go, and caught a bus through dusty streets, to the coach station on the other side of the town. We sat in the 1st floor station café for about 2 hours, people watching. Kids carrying their school artwork, other kids being chased by security, dolled-up women, taxi drivers in vests…

We bought fruit (including the nicest mango ever in the history of the world) and water for the journey, and joined the bus queue/crowd.

Porto Alegre - Hell & Heavenly Feijoada

We arrived late at night. Having phoned various guidebook hotels from Bagé, we were a bit worried about finding somewhere to stay - the places we'd called were either full or very expensive, and we had no idea how to find our way to the different areas of the city. We should have looked around at least a little bit, but we just went straight to the crap, over-priced dump over the road from the bus station.


Porto Alegre bus station

The greasy, string-vested man behind the desk gave us the key, and sent us up to our hovel. The sheets we were supplied with were worn so thin, that once we had put them on the narrow beds, you could see through them to the dirty bedding beneath. The dusty window over-looked a filthy alleyway, and we left it open due to the strong smell of gas in our room, that made us fear for our lives. We could hear shouting coming from everywhere, and the hooting cars on the road out front sounded like they were in the room with us. The light in the cold shower was activated by a switch that was located under the stream of water. Nevermind, we did find the room's ridiculousness quite funny, and we did manage a couple of hours' sleep.

Sadly, we were unable to take photos of the ‘hotel’ room, because it was so small, and the shower at such an awkward angle, that our standard-lensed cameras couldn’t capture the fun.

The breakfast wasn't bad, surprisingly: Plenty of milky coffee, delicious, sweet, tangy little bananas, ripe papaya, breads, cakes, ‘juice’ (squash), cheap ham and plastic cheese.

After breakfast, we went straight to the bus station, super-early, to find out about coaches to Foz d’Iguaçu, and buses to the pretty wine-producing villages that we’d heard about in the Porto Alegre area. We bought our tickets to Foz for early that evening, so that we could briefly explore the surrounding villages before leaving, without having to stay an extra night. But then the ticket seller noticed that we didn’t have visas. We were illegal immigrants, due to having crossed the border in the middle of nowhere. We had to go to the airport to explain ourselves and get a stamp, or we couldn’t travel.

Luckily, the airport wasn’t far, and the customs man only gave us a gentle interrogation, but by the time we got back, we were too late to take a trip into the countryside and get back before our Foz bus. We had to miss out on seeing the vineyards and amuse ourselves in the city, and, after BA, we had intended to avoid metropoli. But after a horrible, watered-down, sugary fruit juice in the bus station, we put our rucksacks in left luggage, and began to tramp the town. We were determined to make the best of it. For a few hours. Until we were utterly wilted by the awfulness of Porto Alegre.


Don’t get me wrong; as with Montevideo, I am sure that given time we would have uncovered many more hidden joys of the city, but our brief experience did not do the place justice (I hope). It was hot, sticky and filthy, impoverished and falling down. We walked past crumbling whorehouses (it was the houses that were crumbling not the whores - the young prostitutes seemed quite spritely, despite their rank living conditions) and charcoal-grey gutter kids lying ignored and unconscious on the pavement. Shops consisted of tatt-touters, selling useless Chinese junk. Obvious Criminals, who happened to be blond and blue-eyed, thought they could gain our trust through colouration and offers of ‘help’. Most people were over-weight to obese levels, and the only food we found was brown and deep-fried, whether it was sweet or savoury. The leggings and platforms were out in force, to accentuate the eye-watering arse sizes. Huge skyscrapers lay derelict, right in the city centre, looming over the shops and stalls. We completely exhausted ourselves trying to find something nice.


Thankfully, we actually did in the end; We found the excellent covered market, with amazing street performers doing somersaults through rings of fire outside. We couldn’t take photos, for fear of being mugged. There were pavement cafés along one outside length of the market (Ahhh! Beer! At last some decent refreshment!), fish stalls lining the outside of the port side, and all sorts of food stalls inside. I’d forgotten that Porto Alegre has a port until I was standing next to it!

We found a restaurant in the market, that reminded me of a Spanish taverna, with its high, tobacco-stained walls, busy waiters in aprons, dark wooden tables and locals enjoying leisurely meals together. Bar Naval serves beer on tap and has a very accommodating service.

Some handily English-speaking men on the next table tried to chat us up, to the amusement of the waiters. The pleasing result was a lot of help with the menu and a recommendation of what to do for the rest of the afternoon, and directions to the city’s massive Redenção park.

The food was comparatively pricey but very good indeed. And it was real food rather than deep-fried dough. We sampled some Brazilian delicacies, tasting a rich, smoky bean feijoada, with farofa (course cassava flour which soaks up and thickens sauces, and adds flavour, crunch and calories) and the fantastic acidic, firey and salty chilli sauce (Anyone know where can I buy this in the UK?). Some spice was very welcome after what was beginning to feel like days of bland stodge. We subsequently realized that the flour and the chilli sauce are permanently on almost every dining table, especially further north.


Feijoada & all the trimmings

The feijoada was like a rich, dark, smoky cassoulet, that contained black beans, smoked pork belly, beef, smoked sausage and what seemed to be an unsmoked sausage with a bone running through it – all absolutely delicious, and served with refreshing slices of orange, crisp salad, rice and greens. I tried to establish what the tender greens were; they’re called ‘couve’, but translations vary from general brassica to cabbage to kale. Kale seems most likely. We also had some delicately fried flat fish and a few chips! Cool lager washed it all down nicely.

We still felt like we were being watched and scoped out from afar, so still no photos, I’m afraid.

Back out into the hazy sun and humidity (smog, maybe,) we began once again to navigate the grimy streets and fried food stalls, until we found the park. What a relief! We spent a couple of peaceful hours watching families and groups of friends playing sports, walking dogs and drinking maté. There were also caged enclosures down paths, among the trees, which housed monkeys and exotic birds.



Finally, feeling exhausted, sweaty, filthy and greasy, we found our way back to the bus station, and caught our overnight coach to Foz.

N.B. As a big exception to my general blog rule, the photos in the post are not mine. While I was searching for them on the internet, I did find some very pleasant looking pictures of Porto Alegre, so maybe we just caught it on a bad day...

First Experience of Freetown - 21st August 2007

Breakfast at Hotel Barmoi could involve eggs, sausage et cetera, but the whole time I stayed there I went for their toasty Sierra Leonean coffee (sadly, the only place I found local coffee!) and fruit, which was either papaya with lime and sugar, mangoes, bananas, or a combination of two.

After breakfast, I was plunged into the incredible hustle and bustle of Freetown, and had my first experience of the torrential downpours of rainy season. We dodged rivers of rainwater and beeping traffic, and slipped into the quiet calm of the Crown Bakery for lunch. The Bakery feels like an unassuming London café but is relatively expensive, and has a Sierra Leonean and international menu. I chose deep fried fish in a bun, which turned out to be cod, and was yum. Pa had fajitas which were good n’ tasty.



In the evening we went to Alex’s, a mainly open-air seafront restaurant. This is a pretty major place to eat in Freetown, where loads of ex-pats eat (the prices being too high for most locals), and all nationalities drink in the sports bar next door, but it would be difficult to find without someone in the know; it’s tucked away behind shacks and stalls. I had bonita fish in a coconut sauce, with draft Star, chips and salad. The start of things to come…

No 2, 2nd Time Around; The Last Supper - 2nd September 2007

No 2, 2nd Time Around

The next morning, we decided that the Banana Islands were not a good idea – we both had a nervous feeling after the trouble in Freetown, which had woken us up to danger in some sense, and the thought of a canoe trip across stormy water suddenly seemed like a very stupid idea.

So instead, we headed back down that bumpy non-road to Sussex, for coffee. We met the soppy dog again, who didn’t mind at all that I was burying her in sand – she seemed to feel quite cosy.



Then we went back to the white sand of No 2 River Beach, for a lovely, relaxing day – my last whole day. Even the sun came out for a while, before a lunch of fish kebabs with tomato and herb sauce, ketchup, sweet potato chips and Star. A new skinny dog enjoyed some of our chips, but there was no sign of the hungry chicken this time.





We went for a walk on the beach, watched some fishermen preparing their new nets, and I bought a made-to-measure skirt, which the tailor brought to me on the beach when it was finished. One fisherman told my dad he has a beautiful daughter. My dad generously offered me in marriage, saying I was very cheap, and would exchange me for the guy’s fishing boat! He was joking, but still - how embarrassing! After a swim in the warm waves, it was time to go.








When we got back to the hotel, we learned that the trouble in town the evening before had involved knives and machetes, and that some people had been injured. The police had had to use tear gas to control the situation.

Last Supper

The last supper was at The Bunker, a fantastic, wooden first floor beach bar on Lumley beach, with reggae and 80s hits playing and a sea breeze flowing through the restaurant. I had prawns in batter, with chips and salad. It was nice, but the prawns were a bit heavy on the over-cooked batter. Pa had prawns in a tasty Mediterranean sauce, and we both drank Star.

We had digestives of rum at the hotel, with some of the staff, including the laughing barman, who was uncontrollable again - this time because my dad told him I’d gone to Paddy’s, and that my dad’s colleagues go to Paddy’s to pick up white women. (Er.. what white women?! There was only me and one student who were white and female.) A waiter sold me the mix CD he’d managed to acquire, and we listened to the music (and the laughing barman) as we drank our rum.