How can it be? All these years a chocoholic but I could not tell you what cacao looked like in its natural form. I knew it was natural. I knew it was good for me. And I knew it grew on a tree. But after a friend and fellow traveler described his first viewing of cacao, I had to see! “They look like escargot covered in slime”. Snails? Really? All I could think of was scenes from The Alien. Little chocolate aliens.
A few days later I found myself at La Loma Jungle Lodge and Chocolate Farm. I made peeking inside cacao pods a priority. The cacao farm was an unexpected bonus for Margaret and Henry when purchasing the property on Isla Bastimentos in the Archipelago of Bocas del Toro. Margaret sat down with me to share some surprises from our common passion.
Inside a ripened and freshly halved pod was a column of cacao beans covered in slimy white pulp. We bravely picked out a slimy shape, popped it in our mouths and sucked the bean clean. It was sweet and delicious without any hint of chocolatey flavor. To me, it tasted like condensed milk with a hint of lime. During the fermentation process, the cacao bean pulp drips off as a sweet liquid. The lodge restaurant uses the cacao honey to make desserts and drinks or sometimes a sweet vinegar.
Monkeys visiting the property share the cacao bounty. The Farm loses 50% of its crop to the capuchins and night monkeys. The capuchins smack the pods open and suck the pulp while the night monkeys bite into them. The monkeys are welcome on La Loma’s property. They are driven off the high production cacao farms but here the monkeys are becoming less and less timid. For jungle and nature loving guests, monkey watching and spotting s is another kind of treat. Bananas and chocolate. It seems monkeys and I have similarly good taste.
Pictured below: The cacao pods begin with a delicate budding flower, 5-6 months later, they are ready for harvesting.
To enjoy a full chocolate farm tour, come spend a night at La Loma Jungle Lodge and Chocolate Farm. Arrive by boat to a dock reaching through the mangroves, landing you and leading you into the jungle pathways, past cacao trees and red frogs to the lodge and sleeping cabins.
Beauty is all around you. Look in, look out, and follow the light! ~Louise