Travel: Panama & Costa Rica Day 10: Monteverde Chocolate & Coffee!
On our first full day in Monteverde we took a morning Don Juan Chocolate and Coffee Tasting Tour*. During the morning tour we learned about the processes of making coffee, chocolate, and even pressing sugar cane in the traditional Costa Rican way.
In the chocolate section of the tour we saw the cacao fruit, and discussed the process of getting chocolate from the pods.
And then we got to mix some chocolate from Cacao powder using the traditional Costa Rican recipe. We then sampled the chocolate which was a bit to bitter for my tastes. The chocolate lovers in the group seemed to enjoy though.
Next we moved on to learning about the how sugar is pressed from sugar cane. Members of our tour group got to operate the sugarcane press, which required quite a bit of strength.
During the tour we sampled:
- Chocolate in its various stages of preparation
- As much coffee as we could drink before and after the tour, various roasts as well
- Raw sugar cane
- The juice that comes from pressing sugar cane.
It was a lot of fun on the beautiful plantation. I had my 100-400 lens* on my camera which was a bit too long for much of the tour, so I don't have a ton of photos.
While I heard many birds while we toured we mostly saw Grackles, but there was a pond on the property that had a family of Muscovy Ducks.
