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Our story

A knife, a compass and a coffee grove

Iguana Bleu’s story begins long before the coffee, with a man who came to Galápagos not knowing he would stay. Four generations later, it ends in a cup in Puerto Ayora.

Green highlands and mist above the Galápagos coast
Old photograph of Luis Jácome on a raft beside a cliff

The Captain

Luis Jácome

Before there was a coffee grove, before anyone thought of planting coffee in the middle of the Pacific, there was a journey. Luis Jácome left the slopes of Cotopaxi with a group of people from the Andes, bound for islands where almost everything was still to be done.

He carried little more than a knife and a compass. He was after the wild cattle that roamed the islands, and after something harder to name: the idea of starting over in a place unlike any other. The family always called him El Capitán, and the name stuck.

Rodrigo Jácome at the door of a wooden cabin on the farm

The Naturalist

Rodrigo Jácome

Rodrigo grew up on those stories and ended up following in his footsteps, though along a different path. He became one of the first naturalist guides in Galápagos and helped establish the Marine Reserve, at a time when protecting the islands was not yet taken for granted.

Over the years a new passion took hold: specialty coffee. In the Santa Cruz highlands he planted a small coffee grove with an ambition that was anything but small. That is how Rancho Bravo began, the grandfather’s farm where every bean we serve is grown.

Bernie Jácome checking the cherries on a coffee tree at Rancho Bravo

The Dream

Bernie Jácome

Growing coffee on an island is not easy. The sun is fierce, nearly everything arrives by boat and the costs pile up faster than the harvests. For a while, the coffee grove came close to being lost.

Bernie decided that would not happen. First came Blue Iguana Coffee, to give the farm’s coffee a future one bag at a time, and then Iguana Bleu: a place in Puerto Ayora to taste that coffee freshly brewed, a few kilometers from where it grows.

From volcano to cup

It all begins with fire

The path the coffee takes, from the volcanic ash of Rancho Bravo to the bar.

  1. 01

    Volcanic soil

    The farm’s soil is ash from old eruptions, rich in minerals. That is where the flavor starts.

  2. 02

    Highlands

    Mist, garúa drizzle and the cool breeze off the Pacific. The cherry ripens slowly, and you can taste it.

  3. 03

    Picked by hand

    Cherry by cherry, only when each one is ready.

  4. 04

    Slow fermentation

    A fermentation without oxygen that brings out notes of fruit, cacao and flowers.

  5. 05

    The cup

    Ground to order and brewed in front of you in Puerto Ayora, however you like it.

Iguana Bleu

And now, a table

Iguana Bleu is the next chapter. The compass is no longer needed: this time, the road ends in a cup.

If you want to hear more about the farm, ask at the bar. There is always someone happy to tell it.

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