The Chocolate Plantation

Today, we headed off to Granada and went on a tour of a chocolate plantation. First, we hopped on a boat across Lake Nicaragua. Our tour guide, Toni, told us a bunch of islands were formed in the lake when the nearby volcano erupted 400 years ago.

We hopped off at the edge of the volcano and hiked up a bit to a spot where horses were waiting. I, Sully, got on a horse named Ballo. Caballo means horse. He didn't seem too pleased that a 230 lbs man was going to ride him. Alden had a few misadventures trying to get mounted, until they found a horse that was a little calmer. We all headed up through fields of plantains, cacao, coffee, oranges and bananas. All the horses picked their way up the steep slopes of the volcano careful of their hooves, not all the branches they carried us through. On the way, we stopped and tried 3 different types of cacao. The pods had to be broken open. Inside were little beans covered with something like white custard. It tasted something like a mango. We ate the white custard and spit out the cacao seeds. We learned that they ferment the beans, then dry them and roast them to make it into the dark yummy stuff we all know and love. 

We watched the farmers play something like baseball mixed with handball and ate lunch at the top of a hill overlooking the plantation and the lake. We had bananas and mangos from the plantation and brownies from the chocolate museum that organized the tour. On the way down, I walked much to Ballo's delight. It was really beautiful. On our way back we hopped into the lake to cool off. It wasn't as nice as our lake, but we were super sweaty from the ride up and back. 

So, that was our big outing. We'll post some pics tomorrow.