Day 19 EV AND ZOSTER!!

Hi everyone! It is Zoe and Evie! We are in charge of the blog for Wednesday, July 6. In summary, today was a very exciting day in Monteverde! We had breakfast at the hotel before heading out bright and early at 7am towards the zip-lining tour. We had a ton of fun zip-lining for about 2 hours! Then, we headed back to the hotel for a bit of free time before walking to a delicious lunch. After lunch, we had a bit more free time at the hotel. At 1:40pm, we headed to a coffee/chocolate/sugar cane tour. The tour was very informative and it was so cool to see the processes behind foods that we all eat/drink so often! Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and rested before walking to a yummy pizza dinner! It was a great second-to-last day in Monteverde!

Hi, it’s Evie! My favorite part was the zip-lining tour that consisted of about 9 lines of soaring from mountain to mountain over the beautiful scenery below. It was exciting, terrifying, and beautiful, depending on who you ask. People could choose to challenge themselves even further by doing a “Tarzan Swing.”  People would step off a platform 150 feet above the ground into free-fall before the rope caught them and they swung for a few seconds. It was so cool to see the nature and ecology of Costa Rica from so high above after spending lots of time looking up close in the camps and on hikes. Today was such a great day!

Hey, it’s Zoe! My personal highlight was the Chocolate, Sugar, and Coffee Tour. We visited Don Juan tours, where our guide led us through each of the processes to make the chocolate, sugar, and coffee we know and love. We began with chocolate, and were able to taste the raw seeds from the cacao pod. The seeds themselves are not good to bite into, but you suck on the seeds which are covered with flavorful mucilage, white pulp that tastes similar to mango. We were then showed the various stages of the 7 day fermentation process. After this process, the seeds are roasted. At this point, you can peel open the husk of the seed and break apart the cacao nibs that are inside. We got to taste these as well, and they were quite bitter. Our guide also showed us how to use a traditional stone metate, a surface to help grind the cacao nibs into more of a paste consistency. 

We then went to the next room, where our guide had us grind more chocolate using a hand crank machine. He then added cinnamon, salt, chili, black pepper, brown sugar, and vanilla to make a delicious paste that we dipped bananas into, and then mixed with hot water to make a chocolate drink as well. We even got to taste some finished chocolate, one that was 70% cacao with rum and orange flavor, as well as some white chocolate and chocolate covered coffee beans. 

After we had our chocolate fix, we headed to learn about sugar cane, and got to use a special grinding machine to squeeze out the sugary water from the cane. We then added lime and rosemary to make a fresh virgin mojito-type drink. We all enjoyed this very much!

Finally, we learned about the coffee bean growing and roasting process. What I’ve learned about growing both cacao and coffee is that they take a very long time to get to a first harvest. For cacao, it takes about 5 years from planting before you get the first fruits, and only around 6% of the flowers end up producing fruits. For coffee, it takes about 4 years. Coffee beans have many different roasting processes and the fermentation times of the beans depends on how many of the beans’ 4 layers have been removed. 

(Pictured are: green coffee beans (0 roasting time), light roast, medium roast, dark roast, and honey roast)

When the tour finished, we were guided into the gift shop where we could try their fresh dark roast, medium roast, light roast, or honey coffee, as well as hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was definitely a fan favorite :)

Here are a few other fun facts we learned along the tour:

- sugar cane is better at lower elevations, having about 80% sugar and 20% water, but at higher elevations, it is the opposite

- The dry sugar cane scraps can be used for paper, firewood or as animal feed

- The coffee season lasts only 4 months

We had fun and learned a lot today! Thanks for reading!

Pure Vida,

Evie and Zoe