About halfway down the length of Peru and over the top of the Andes, lies the Cusco coffee growing region. It’s been a well-kept secret up until the last few years, but coffees from this area are making the specialty coffee market sit up and take notice. Part of this is the altitude: currently, no other coffee region in the world has as many producers living at or above 2000 MASL.
This is a land of towering mountains, ancient ruins such as the famed Machu Picchu, and some coffee producers have their farms along what was a secret escape route down the backside of the old fortress—undiscovered until 1980 by the rest of the world, but farmed by generations of coffee growers. Infrastructure is underwhelming, distances are vast--10+ hours from the southern to the northern edge of the region, but the coffees are worth the effort.