CHOCO Museum

After a bus ride, a ferry, a taxi ride, a very uncomfortable bus ride and a long walk with our packs, we arrived in Granada yesterday.

After showering off the funk and crankiness of the travel day, we hit the main street.
We find beautiful churches, buildings and lots of delicious food to eat.

Granada is "the business" as my cousin Courtney would say.
It's just cool. It's old, beautiful and has that certain something. People are nice, foreigners and locals and there's just so much to look at soak up. You can just spend the day wondering around, eating and taking pictures.

Last night we found a lovely little cafe on the main floor of this beautiful hotel.
The name is the Chocolate Cafeteria so immediately I was interested.
After our pizza for dinner we wandered over there for a coffee and then discovered the dessert
fridge. Ohhhhhhhh my.
I had a rich chocolate piece of cake and Randy had a lovely piece of passionfruit cheesecake.

We returned here for breakfast and again for coffee and dessert after our dinner tonight as well.

Although our stay at Finca Santo Domingo was fantastic, they definitely lacked in the coffee department so it was so nice to have a real, strong cup.

Today was great. Although we were getting quite hot and sweaty walking around with no ocean to cool off in, we took in a museum that featured ceramics dating back to 300-500 A.D. pretty cool.
Then beside this museum was the CHOCO museum. Ahhhhh, my heaven. I LOVE chocolate.
The museum was full of history and information. They offer a chocolate making workshop.
Hot, sweaty, thirsty and tired we sign up.

So fantastic. Our guide was a feisty Nicaraguan girl named Giselle.
We learned about the cocoa tree, the pods, harvesting, fermenting everything!
We got to roast the bean, then peel the shell off called winnowing, then grind it up and then Giselle made up a few different kinds of cocoa drinks. A drink that the Mayans preferred, ones that the Spanish preferred etc. All were amazing.

To think of how much work goes into making these drinks. Only women could prepare the beans and make the drinks which is very time consuming and grinding those beans takes a bit of effort!
Then to prepare honey, fresh cinnamon and vanilla. Not by opening a bottle like we did today.
Amazing.
Then we were able to make our own chocolate bar filled with whatever treat we wanted.
Almonds, Flor de Cana rum, peanuts, cashews, chili etc.
They are in the fridge cooling as I type and we will pick them up tomorrow.

It was such a great afternoon to learn the history and process of something that I love consuming so much and how chocolate can vary in taste, quality, texture etc.

Go out and buy some organic chocolate today!
Yum!