making chocolate at a hostel called cocoa

Me canadian pals had heard of a hostel called cocoa run by a tour operator in town. It's an amazing place right on a river, just down the road from an old fruit farm that's just used for tours these days.

After talking the bus driver into letting us on (yes, we can see it's sold out, can't we just sit on the floor in the back?) we rode the 4 hours through mountains and cloud forest to Puerto Quito the nearest town to the hostel. A drive with high-traffic upholstered seats dampening our road trip chatter on the floor.

It's so nice to get out of Quito. As much as I love it with all of it's sleazy shawarma joints and live music, it's still city and it's always a treat to get out.

At cocoa, we had a tour of the fruit farm, a huge spot with bananas, pineapples, at least 5 types of citrus, passion fruit, cocoa, coca and more - it was a foody's dream to spend an afternoon walking around eating organic produce straight from the plant. Afterwards, we went back to make some chocolate. It grows in these pods pictured above which are either purple or orange depending on the variety. The seeds are pulled from the pods and furmented for 8 days in a tank and then dried for 2-3 days depending on the intensity of the sun. We picked up at the next step, which is roasting the beans to improve aroma. We did this standing on a fire next to the river. The roasted beans are shelled and then ground in a meat grinder, the grounds are then added to boiling milk and cane sugar for the freshest purest chocolate i've ever had.

After dinner (which of course came after the chocolate), we went down to the river again to salsa dance for hours. After working up a sweat (it being almost as humid as georgia's summers), we cooled off with a dip in the river. It was nice enough just to swim a bit in a pool retained by a rock dam, but sitting on the other side in the middle of the rapids was like a natural jacuzi.

Somehow i made it back, though they need volunteers and i might have to disappear for a week or two :)