Today was the day were we finally packed up everything into our backpacks and our small duffel bag to take down to the Amazon tomorrow morning. But first, there was an important thing to do before we left: go to the chocolate museum and make our own chocolate.

At the chocolate museum, we learned about the different stages of chocolate from bean to bar. There are three main different types of bean. Two are grown in South America, one in Africa. In Africa, the main producers are the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where there are a lot of beans grown. In South America, there is one type that is grown naturally and another that is a hybrid between the two grown in South America and Africa.

A tree usually has two seasons of harvest, one from October to March and another from June to August. The one from October to March is the larger one, averaging for about 100 pods per fully grown tree. In the other harvest season, there are only about 50 pods per tree.

The tree starts out in a shade covered nursery, growing about 8 inches tall before it is sold to tree farmers. The tree farmer should plant the tree under shade, preferably plantain or banana trees, and fertilize the plant. The plant will start producing fruit in about 2 or 3 years, but will reach full maturity at about 5 or 6 years of age. The plant needs to be tended to every week so that some fungi will not inhabit it and kill it off before it can produce any food.

After the beans get harvested, they are cut open and the white seeds are carried away to where they are dried in the sun and roasted. They then get but into bags and shipped away. The beans are eventually shelled and crushed, before getting mixed with milk powder and sugar to make the chocolate. Eventually, the chocolate gets heated at 40 degrees Celsius and then mixed and molded to form chocolate bars, which take 10 beans to make a 100g bar .

We then went to the factory to make ourselves some chocolate. We first roasted some beans in a clay pot before grinding them into a paste with mortar and pestle. We then used that paste to make several different kinds of drinks; an early Spanish hot chocolate and an early Mayan hot chocolate. The Mayan drink was a little bit spicy, but my favorite was definitely the Spanish hot chocolate.

We also learned that when the Spanish first got to the New World, they thought that the Mayan’s drink was too spicy and bitter. But when the Spanish took some of the beans home, the discovered how delectable the chocolate really is and made the first hot chocolate as we know it. They also kept the chocolate a secret from the rest of the Old World for 100 years!

Then the best part began: we got some warmed chocolate from a bowl and used a variety of molds and mix-ins to obtain chocolate. I got a mold for six chocolate bars and made each one different. There was one that had Brazil nuts, peanuts, and almonds ground up and there was another with peanut butter M&Ms with raisins. When we finished, we went back home for an hour to let the chocolate set. When we got it and tasted it, it was really, really good.

That’s all for now, Folks!