Two of Trinidad's Finest

Location: Gran Couva & Maracas Beach

We started the day having breakfast al fresco overlooking the Gulf of Paria. We ate at the Breakfast Shed, which in reality is neither a shed nor a traditional breakfast restaurant. It's more like a market place with different stalls serving up various dishes. Ned followed Gino and did one of those point and "I'll have what he's having" kind of thing. He ended up with a salted fish salad, some kind of thick bread and a green salad (which he didn't eat given his experience eating salad on our last trip to Belize).
I enlisted Sarah's help and ended up with a onion-pepper egg scramble, fried plantains, cooked pumpkin and "fry bake" a thick fried bread. Let's just say my choice was the better option, especially since Ned seemed to eat more of my breakfast than his. This was all washed down with the typical instant Nescafe. Yes, the irony does not allude me that Trinidad grows great coffee and yet Nescafe seems to turn up at most of our breakfasts.

A big cocoa adventure for the day was heading towards Central Trinidad and visiting the famous San Juan Cocoa Estate. The Estate is located in the Gran Couva area and is 1000 acres in size. It is the largest and oldest cocoa Estate in Trinidad. It was established in 1870 by the Agostini family and has operated continuously ever since. It is nearly impossible to obtain their cocoa beans since their current production is exclusively purchased by Valrhona Chocolate of France.

We met with Mr. Solomon and he gave us a personal tour and overview of their operation. Spending time at this cocoa estate one feels as if they have stepped back in time. When we first arrived we drove past the cabins where the workers originally lived and still do to this day. It's definitely a working estate, but has had very little improvements for the past century. We were fortunate to see cocoa beans fermenting and drying in progress. They use a traditional box fermentation method, covered in banana leaves. Mr. Solomon pulled back the leaves and we dove our hands down into the slimy mess. It is really warm, smells quite yeasty, and reminded me of that old Halloween game where you stick your hand in a bag or bowl of peeled grapes and have to guess what it was. Yeah, slimy, warm, yeasty and not real sterile.

The next step was seeing the fermented beans laid out to sun dry. I was delighted to see they had a "cocoa dancer" or young man walking thru the beans, in his bare feet, and flipping the beans over. Quite impressive! The beans can take anywhere from 4 to 6 days to dry, depending on the weather.

The dried beans are then taken to a shed where they are run through a polisher, with a slight bit of surface water added, and then air dried again. Another worker, named Tobago, was raking the dried beans. It's hard to believe these very highly prized beans are processed in such an antiquated facility whose method hasn't changed much in the last hundred years.

Ned's favorite piece of equipment was built in 1901 and made of wood. Its function is to sort the beans by size. To me it looked like a huge bingo bin, where the balls are being tossed all around. As the beans progress through the spiral, the screen gets wider so that the smallest beans are removed first and then the largest beans are the last to come out. Eventually all the beans are dropped into bags and sorted according to size.

The real beauty of this estate is seeing their massive grounds of cacao groves. We piled in the back of Mr. Solomon's pick up and he drove us through a small portion of these groves. Dang the most beautifully pruned and maintained cocoa fields I've seen yet. The cocoa pods are humungous and look like large colorful footballs hanging from the trees, If I didn't know better I'd swear someone had come by that morning and individually polished each and every pod. As we were jostled along in the back of the pick-up I kept singing in my head that Alice In Wonderland song, "Painting the Roses Red."

It was awesome to get a close up view of the cacao, the pond and the grounds. I'll never get tired of eating fresh cacao picked from a tree with it's sweet passion fruit, banana kind of flavor. Yum!!

Mr. Solomon, a really sweet elderly gentlemen, is the overseer of the production and has worked on a cacao plantation since he was 16. He very kindly invited us into his modest home, served us much appreciated glasses of crisp, cool water and entertained us with his stories and experiences. He very sweetly gave me a book about the history of the villages in Trinidad. I told him that it was just a loan since I vowed to return one day.

By this time we were all pretty drenched from the hot blazing sun and feeling a little play time was in order. Sarah, again the world's best ever guide, driver, and partner in crime, drove us to the northern area of Trinidad. I really enjoyed seeing more of the towns and countryside, but the highlight was definitely driving over the Northern Mountain range and looking down on Maracas Bay. Simply stunning!! We finally reached one of the best beaches that Trinidad has to offer. Soft sandy beach, warm water, perfect body surfing waves and the trade winds blowing through the palm trees. We swam, dove, splashed, and played around in the water for a much appreciated fun afternoon. For the record Sam wins the prize for best body surfer. Dang, can that boy ride a wave!!

Before we came, Gino sent us a link to an Andrew Zimmern YouTube of things to eat in Trinidad. We pretty much nailed everything on the list and last up (for us) was Richard's Bake & Shark. Gino swears by it! We all ordered these fried shark pieces put on a fry bread and then loaded them up with stuff from the most awesome condiment bar. Pepper sauces, mango salad, cucumbers, pineapple, tamarind, were just some of the things one could pile on high. The guys washed their Bake & Shark's down with beer, while I kept the tropical vibe and went with the rum punch.

All in all I'd say we had a pretty amazing day and definitely enjoyed two of the finest experiences that Trinidad has to offer. I'm sad this is our last night in Trinidad and hope to come back and visit this country's other island, Tobago. Ned, Gino and Sarah are all working on meeting up in January at the San Juan Estate to do some harvesting. Ned and Sam are hoping to work in exchange for some cocoa beans. Mmmm. wonder if I could hang out in Tobago while Ned worked??? Just a thought...