First Day at Camino Verde

Location: Manso Hotel, Guayaquil, Ecuador

I knew that when we checked into this charming hotel in the wee hours of the morning that it was pretty cool, but I didn't appreciate just how unique it was until this morning. It's a boutique hotel overlooking the Rio Guayas located in the main hub of the city. The communal area has a balcony with a hammock, charming inner courtyard, small dining area for breakfast and is decorated local artisan paintings and crafts. It feels homey, yet very European.

We met up with several folks from Dandelion Chocolate (a handcrafted bean to bar chocolate company located in San Francisco), a young woman originally from Venezuela who is interested in beginning a cacao farm, a French woman who teaches, consults and is an author about all things chocolate, and of course continued to be with Sam of Videri Chocolate and Gino, our broker. In total there were 11 of us. The next couple of days we will be spending time at the Camino Verde Estate, and getting a really thorough overview of their cacao production and unique post harvest techniques. All three of the chocolate makers on this tour (Cello Chocolate, Videri, and Dandelion) buy their beans from the Camino Verde farm and we were all super interested and excited to get a first hand overview.

Our host the next couple of days is Vicente Norero of Camino Verde. After introductions over breakfast (I had a quinoa, carrot and onion patty and a banana) we began the 2 hour drive to Balao, where Camino Verde Plantation resides. This estate is the antithesis of everything we saw in Trinidad. It is about 1000 acres and is run like clockwork. Vicente is an economist at heart (he studied at the Wharton School of Business), speaks several languages, and is obsessed with running the most efficient and environmentally friendly farm as possible.

Camino Verde also runs an organic banana plantation that produces close to 2 trailer loads of bananas a day! Vicente gave us a very thorough review of this process. We saw bananas being harvested, washed and packaged. Spent time in the field with demonstrations on how bananas are wrapped and trimmed. We also learned about his in-depth composting procedure, including how he grows his own micro-organisms.
He also created a very sophisticated watering system. Pretty impressive!

After a long car ride and spending quite a lot of time on the banana production, we had worked up an appetite. Vicente was a gracious host and served us an amazing meal. We had fried plantains that we smothered in a spicy sauce, ceviche made with the freshest shrimp ever and a rice dish. DELISH!! After this amazing meal and basically functioning on very little sleep I was ready for a siesta. Vicente had other plans...

We spent the next 4 hours or so getting a very thorough overview of the cacao portion of the plantation. We visited several different fields, each with different varieties of cacao. Vicente's knowledge of EVERYTHING cacao is unlimited. From seedling to harvest it was like drinking from a fire hose taking in all the information he gave us. We also tasted many different varieties of cacao fresh off the tree. All the chocolate makers had brought our bars made from the Camino Verde beans. At about 5ish we all piled into Vicente's field office and had a tasting. It was awesome to taste and compare our bars. They were all so good, each one uniquely different. Vicente really enjoyed the cinnamon flavor that came through our Ecuador bar. It was exactly one of the reasons this single origin is Ned's favorite. You can't imagine how cool it is to travel thousands of miles and have our chocolate tasted by the farmer that grew the cacao. What a thrill!!

By the time we all piled back into the cars and reached the hotel (after several stops for adult libations at roadside stands along the way) we were exhausted. Of course, that didn't stop us from rallying the troops and venturing out to a local restaurant. It was so much fun dining outside, sharing pitchers of sangria with everyone, while sharing all our dishes. Greg had us in stitches with his stories. Good times!