Don Olivo Chocolate Tour

A peaceful night of sleep and the morning weather was not hot. We were able to dump the cassette and leave the park as it started to rain. The exit gate was not open yet so Christine was able to open it manually and we left. 

We had an appointment with another chocolate tour for 10 am. It was at a family's home.

They let us fill it water tanks before the tour. We had parked next to a cacao tree we noticed. 

The tour was awesome and filled with so much information of all the plants on their 16 acre farm. The only drawback. Was that it cost $75 for all of us. Dd was free and Ellie was $15 but Christine and I were $30 each. 

We were given some apple bananas, tiny thin skinned bananas we had first tried in Belize 14 years ago but had not found again since. They were sweet and delicious. And they fed us a piece of their homemade chocolate which was also delicious. They showed us how easily they could plant sugar cane by burying a cane horizontally. They had rambutan trees, taro plant (elephant ears), dragon fruit, seeded red bananas, yellow bananas, termite tracks, mango trees, and star fruit.

They peeled a Valencia orange and showed the kids how to drink from it by squeezing it. They loved it. They had coffee trees and let us taste the fruit. They showed us a sour green fruit, annota, a red dyed fruit.

There was a furry spider in a pineapple plant that they called a common spider that Dd was brave enough to touch. They let us chew and suck on sugar cane which Ellie loved. They had peppercorn and coriander and cardamom and vanilla. They had a rubber tree. Finally they showed us the process of making and harvesting cacao.

The fruit was a little like soursop and Dd sucked the white substance off the beans. We finished the tour with another taste of their chocolate and had some chocolate milk.

Very amazing tour. The soil is amazingly rich and their process is so organic without chemical additives. We also bought a bag of coffee.

We headed toward the coast after stopping for lunch at a "soda", a local eatery. We had two of their plates of the day, one beef and the other chicken. It was $14 total. Delicious. 

We headed south on mountainous roads in the cloud forest and it was pretty terrible for the kids and fortunately they fell asleep. We made it to the low lands and the roads were better and finally the coast at Jaco right after sunset and parked at a beach parking lot for free.

It was on ioverlander and was well lit for the restaurants near by. It rained but was muggy. There was a river close by that had muddy runoff. We ate left overs and kept the doors and windows open until rain started coming in. Tomorrow we will play at the beach unless it is raining.