I think we’re getting old. We started the day by continued the previous day’s trend of doing nothing and lounged around the house most of the the morning. I woke up around seven, finished my book, then ate breakfast around 8:30 or 9. Tiffany discovered a chocolate plantation tour, which we jumped on, which gave us the timeline for the day. I jumped in the shower, shaved (finally!) and then we set out for Arenal.
I realized part way through the hike, as a child I dreamed of seeing places like this! It’s incredible! As a child, I was in love with the idea of rain forests: the density and diversity of life, the sheer greeness of it. incredible.
Half way rough, we came across this ficus with the most immense root structure I’ve ever seen. I’m sure I I’m sure I’ve seen larger redwoods,mount the presence of this tree was remarkable! Just huge.
No sloths thought, so the whole morning was a waste.
After hiking, we took a lazy drive back to town and got coffee from the Rainforest Cafe. It’s my goal to get Amy at least amenable to coffee by the end of the trip.
Post coffee, we went to Rain Forest Chocolate Tour, which was incredible. They walked us through the entire, complex process that happens just to produce a tiny amount of chocolate:
- After ripening on the tree, cocoa pods are harvested and cracked open. At this point, the seeds taste extremely bitter and not at all pleasant. The meat around the seeds is mucousy and tastes most similar to guavanaba.
- The seed pods are removed and allowed to ferment for seven days. The fermentation process leaves the seeds free from the meat and helps break down the flavonoids in the seeds.
- After fermenting, the seeds are laid out to dry until they’re at about 40% of their original water content. At this point, the taste of the seed is recognizably chocolate, but still bitter and raw. After this stage, the seeds are stable enough to be transported off the plantation to be further processed.
- The seeds are then roasted at 240°C for about ten minutes, and then mashed to allow the shell to Be separated from the meat of the bean. The bits of bean are finally something we’d recognize: cocoa nibs
- The nibs are then processed (or not) depending on the desired final product, typically mixed with sugar, ground fine, mixed with milk solids, and formed into bars.
What was surprisingly cool was how complicated cocoa plantations are:
- it takes five years from the time a cocoa tree is planted to the time a mature cocoa pod can be harvested
- plantations are necessarily biodiverse, both to survive the first years until the trees start to bear fruit, but also because the cocoa trees themselves require it: bananas for shade, butterflies and other insects to pollinate, other plants to spurt the insects, small mammals to help keep populations in check and support tree growth…
- because of this, plantations are almost always small, one or two hectacre outfits, with each hectacre capable of producing a metric ton of cocoa. A metric ton goes for roughly $3500 US, which, in Costa Rica, doesn’t go very far. All of the money is in processing. Luckily (for Costa Rican farmers, at least) the cocoa trees that grow in Costa Rica produce the highest grade cocoa. This allows them to survive even though Africa far outpaces them in cocoa production.
We then tried a few different. Kinds of chocolate, as a drink like it was originally enjoyed by the Mayan elite, then later after Lindt and Nestle had their ways with it (making it melt-able and easier to access, respectively). We ate ourselves to just shy of sickness.
I bought a few bars of chocolate produced by a local women’s cöop, then we heeded home, made dinner, and kept it low key.