Coffee & Cocoa Plants

The place where we see monkeys is also home to a coffee production operation and a place where chocolate is made. We had the opportunity to learn all about how these products are made and even had a chance to sample raw materials.  What an experience! 

Dominican Ladies prepared our snacks.

A coconut, fresh and untried

Dry coconut 

Learning about the processes.

This one is germinating. It takes about a month for this to happen.

Very fresh coconut & pineapple. The pineapple was AMAZING...the coconut was...eehhh.

Everyone tried everything. Dad cleaned all the plates. (He had only had breakfast and there wasn't much to eat on this tour!)

The cocoa plant seed is where the cocoa comes from...(I think)...and we had the chance to suck on some seeds. They taste a little like banana.  If you ate the seed, it was very bitter (of course, Mike ate his and agreed that it is quite bitter).

As we left the classroom for the tasting room, we had the chance to eat some raw cocoa & cane sugar (a major export of the Dominican Republic, we drove by many sugar cane fields).

In the tasting room, we sampled coffee,  coffee with sugar, and chocolate and vanilla. All of these were naturally produced on site and were quite tasty.  

We learned a lot about coffee and cocoa... but we were here for MONKEYS!  Well,  it was about to be monkey-time.