Today was another exciting day!! We visited the cocoa plantation, at the same reserve that we saw the bats last night. It was a great way to start the day, learning the history of the cocoa bean, how chocolate came about, and of course... All of the sampling!!
Our tour guide, giving us a cocoa history lesson.
The cocoa fruit! Wait til you see inside!
Nicole, cracking open the cocoa fruit.
It was really interesting to learn about the fermentation process. When indigenous people discovered this method, the beans received natural sugars from the fruit, bacteria from their mouths (sucking off the outer coating) and water from the moisture in the air! The beans fermented dried, and were roasted (a process that takes upwards of 8 weeks) to become what they call "nibs." We were able to try a nib at this stage... It was bitter, somewhat chocolatey, but apparently very good for you and very rich in antioxidants!
After roasting, the nibs are peeled and grounded with a hot stone (to release the natural cocoa butter). Cody helped speed up the process by using the small churning machine to grind the nibs (mixed with cinnamon and sugar!)
Our guide brewing "Cacao Agua!" Apparently this is the name that the settler gave to cocoa water because of the bitter taste.
Megan and I and our Cacao Agua!! (We added nutmeg, black pepper, chili powder, and a splash of vanilla!)
We got to sample SO much chocolate, compared dark to milk, etc... It was quite the morning. We then had some time to kill so we went exploring around the reserve!
At the end of our exploration we saw HUGE, loud howler monkeys which was pretty cool. Then we went back to the main entrance, did a little bit of souvenir shopping, and loaded the bus to head back to La Selva.
We ate lunch and then headed over to the classroom for our Careers in Science talk led by Peggy, which was amazingly informative per usual. It gave me some great lesson ideas for my first unit of biology - I'm getting anxious to go back to school!!
After class, we finished up our last bit of data collection post- banana soil sampling, and got some great conclusions for our research project! We present tomorrow, so we spent a majority of the afternoon finalizing our presentation. We're excited to share what we learned with the rest of the group! (And we have matching shirts, of course:))
After dinner we hung out, played a few quick games, showered and went to bed. We're all getting more and more tired as the days go on, but also more and more sad that we only have a few days left!!
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