Are you my Cacao?

Blaster bee-lines for the hotel, as he's still not quite made the turn for the better with the food poisoning. Unfortunately for me and Kellie, we still haven't made it to midpoint down yet. Our last stop on day 7 is the quaint little town of Vinces. Hard to imagine this town has a French heritage?






It's off to the Senor de los Cabllalos hotel for the evening.










It's also a working chocolate plantation, so why not get a tour? This would be a GREAT place to ride bikes


I normally see the Cacao pods which are burgundy color. It makes sense, the ripe ones have been harvested!


Apparently, they not ripe until they get a golden color to it. I think this guy could do plastic surgery with a machete. He artfully opens the pod.


When the pod is ripe, the beans easily separates from the pod.


The beans have a sweet fleshy white covering, then the center is the tart coco.


With that our guide grabs this harvest basket, and starts making short work of this little project


An ode to all the pods that once lived..


The trees take about 5 years to mature to made pods. They only produce for about 25 years. Once they are end of production, the main truck is macheted off. Then a sapling grows from the stump.


The seeds are then fermented for 3 days. Then dried




Who doesn't love pure cacao?


Many folks might not know, but the Cacao plants only grow with +10 to -10 latitudes. This means a very narrow strip of earth. Ecuador cacao (the Nationale) is preferred by swiss chocolatiers. The other main countries for Cacao trees is West Africa. Many sources indicate that the trees are coming end of life and will create a world wide shortage.