Costa Rica: Cocoa!

We enjoyed a lovely chocolate tour with Don Olivio and family, just outside La Fortuna. We ate fruit fresh from the trees, crushed sugar cane to make juice, brown sugar, and rum. And we learned all about cocoa and chocolate making. 

Please pass me the cocoa fruit...

 ...so that I may balance it on my head.

Few fun facts-- the cocoa seeds inside the pod are purple, covered in a yummy slime. They get fermented, roasted, crushed and then run through a machine to convert them into the richest of cocoa powder. The real deal sells for about $40US a pound.

For us, they blend the cocoa powder with their homemade brown sugar. Delicious. They also melted the powder in fresh milk for us and we enjoyed the best of hot chocolates.