Ecuador Day 7 - Chocolate & Hot Springs

Another great day - chocolate and a spa, what more could we ask for!

Before we were picked up by our driver, Milton, from Hakuna Matata resort, we had a basic demonstration on how chocolate is made from Manuel, the same guy who took us horse riding.  He didn't speak English so a good job we knew what was going on.  He showed us a cocoa pod split open with the sweet moist fruit inside, the cocoa bean part the fruit pip/stone and he had a supply of dried cocoa beans. The fruit would have been removed and left to ferment for a few days to help develop the flavour of the cocoa beans.  The beans would then have been left to dry in the sun for a few days.  

The cocoa beans were then roasted for about ten minutes, this process develops the flavour more.  Once roasted the cocoa bean shells remove easily leaving you the cocoa bean or cocoa nibs. They were hot but we managed to still remove the shells and got very black hands in the process.  These pure chocolate beans, you could eat but they would taste very bitter.  The cocoa beans where then put in a grinder to produce a thick chocolate paste, the cocoa mass.  We each had a go at grinding, it was a tough old fashioned grinder!  The cocoa mass was then stirred into some milk and sugar added.  This was then heated to boiling and cooked until it thickened. A couple of canela leafs (part of the cinnamon family) were added for flavour and later removed.  The result a sweet thick chocolate paste which we were served with banana.  It had a great flavour but was still pretty grainy and you wouldn't be able to make chocolate bars from it.  The paste would need to be processed further, a method called 'conching' to make it smoother and then tempered to make the smooth chocolate we like to eat. What we ate though tasted pretty good and it was great to see the process, although a very basic, crude chocolate making process in the flesh. 

At ten we left to head back to Quito.  We stopped for lunch on the way in Baeza, and had some local trout.  The area has many trout farms.  We could see trout (and other meats) hung over fires on the roadside being smoked. We didn't risk eating this trout, the exhaust fumes may have added to the flavour though, we went to a proper restaurant.  I had trout cooked in a local leaf, I've forgotten the name of it, and Nigel had baked trout, delicious.

After lunch we headed to Papallacta where there were some thermal springs in the mountains.  We went to the spa section and had a relaxing three hours in the thermals pools, each pool had different degrees of heat and had an hours massage session each.  Expensive but very nice and relaxing. 

By the time we got back to Quito it was 8pm.  We're staying at the same lovely hotel again, Veija Cuba in the La Mariscal area of town.  We were very hungry so just nipped around the corner to the same bar/pizza place we went to last time, D'Vinci Rocks, a very quirky bar with great food and great 80's music playing.  I had the best Hawaiian pizza I've ever had, Nigel had a Calzone, also delicious.