-Juan, Owner of Ixcacao Maya Belizean Chocolate Farm
Like I said, today was the chocolate farm. We'll get there.
Wednesday in Punta Gorda is Market Day. As small a town as PG is, it's like the city here. All the farmers from nearby Mayan villages travel to PG to set up their market. People begin setting up around 3:30am! Last night, we planned to leave at 7 this morning to go check it out.
Well, it rained and thundered all night (the hardest rain I've ever experienced, no joke), and by morning, I felt no more rested than I did the evening before. I almost skipped out on the market to get another hour or two of sleep, but I reminded myself of one of my goals here in Belize (try everything...within reason), so at 6:50 I forced myself out of bed.
I'm super glad I went to the market. All the fresh veggies, fruits, and beans were beautiful. I bought nine apple bananas (Google) for $1 Bz. They are so good.
After some shopping, we headed back to our hotel, and a few minutes later, Juan and Abelina, the owners/operators of the chocolate farm, arrived. My first impression of them were that they were very kind people, taking the time to greet each of us individually.
A 15-passenger van transported us from our hotel to an archeological reserve. From there, Juan gave us a tour of several Mayan formations, explaining the uses of various plants along the way.
This tree is referred to by locals as the tourist tree:
(It's red and the bark peels off.)
If you stab this tree, sticky sap runs out of it that eventually hardens into a natural rubber:
The ancient Mayans used the rubber to form the balls they'd use for sports.
Juan frequently talked about the fact that each living thing has a purpose on this earth, from the ants living near his banana plants to these two trees:
The sturdy, strong tree on the left will eventually die from suffocation, as the roots from the tree on the right wrap around the stronger one to use its support.
After the archeological part of the tour, we walked around the actual chocolate farm. Besides cocoa pods, Juan and Abelina had coffee plants (this is a coffee bean and its shell),
all-spice (smells like Christmas and numbs your tongue when you taste it),
jippi joppa (a type of palm shoot that's considered a delicacy...also used to weave baskets),
and banana trees.
The cocoa pods themselves were not what any of us pictured. You twist them off the tree, crack it open (not unlike Rafiki does with fruit in The Lion King), and inside is a brain-looking structure:
(Juan is laughing at our reactions.)
So, you pull out a little cocoa bean, which is covered in gooey slime, and you suck on it. It looks nasty, but it tastes like mangoes. You suck off all the slime, and behold, there is the cocoa bean.
The cocoa bean is chocolate, right? Wrong. The inside is purple...
From the farm, we drove to the production facility. Here you roast the beans at 350°F for 45 minutes (I think). But we didn't do this part of the chocolate making process. Instead, we ate the most amazing meal I've ever had, prepared by Abelina:
Picture vegetable rice, white rice, beans, plantains boiled in coconut water, chocolate chicken, chocolate curry pork, jippi joppa, fresh tomatoes, fresh cucumbers, and lime juice:
And pure hot cocoa:
I'm not kidding when I say it ranks in the top 5 meals I've ever had. Everything was organic and grown on their farm. We finished lunch with chocolate-covered bananas and a tray of chocolates to taste. Then we got back to work.
The next part of the process was shelling the beans. This was actually really difficult. The beans in their shells:
Hand-shelling the beans:
Once you shelled the beans, the picturesque, beautifully roasted cocoa bean was left:
Next you grind them. Of course you can do all these steps with machinery, but we did it the old fashioned Mayan way, using an old basalt slab:
I got a turn to try it:
You do this until the chocolate is melted into a shiny liquid:
(At this stage, it still wasn't shiny enough yet.)
Add your desired amount of sugar (this is where you get the % cocoa), put it in a mold to cool, and voilà, you've got chocolate. I absolutely love that the only ingredients were the cocoa and some sugar.
That was about the end of the tour. We did go through an amazing "gift shop" (right by their machines in the kitchen) and left completely broke.
Juan also showed us a few heirloom instruments, like this xylophone:
I, of course, had to play a tune:
Finally, we got to play with some of the family pets. There was Truffle, the puppy, and Chocolate Pork, the pig:
What a sweetheart she was:
I just loved this experience, not only because I am addicted to chocolate. I loved Juan and Abelina's values. They believe that everything in life has a purpose and we (all living things) need to work together. They do organic because of this belief, not because it's trendy. They are very connected to their culture but are also willing to share everything they have.
Something else I've noticed about both them and Ronald, the Garifuna descendent, is that while they want to share their own culture, they're also open to learning about others' cultures as well. We have so much to learn from each other. I think the minute you stop listening is the minute you stop learning.
Overall, great time in PG. Tomorrow, we hit up the Cayo District. I'm stoked!
