El Quetzal Chocolate Factory Mindo

Saturday, January 31st, 2015 Mindo
After a breakfast of French toast at the Beehive, we bought tickets from the local tour guy for a tour of the Orchid Farm ($3 each) and the Chocolate Factory ($6 each). Both are in town so we were able to walk.
The Orchid Farm apparently has 200 different species of orchids growing. Our tour lasted only about 20 minutes and we saw maybe 30 or so different species, many of which were only clearly visible through a magnifying glass. The whole thing was a bit of a disappointment although the flowers themselves are quite delicate and beautiful. I suppose if you were really interested in orchids it might be good but otherwise it's just not that interesting.

From there we walked to El Quetzal, a cafe and chocolate factory. There were about a dozen of us on the one hour tour with our guide, a Portuguese expat. First we sat at a table while he showed us the huge cocoa pods from which the beans are harvested and he explained the process. We each sucked on a raw cocoa bean to experience the flavour. Then he took us out to the gardens where the cocoa trees grow; up to the drying sheds where the beans are dried on big wire tables (where we tried dried beans), to the "hot room" where the beans are ground and mixed; and to the "cold room" where the pure liquid chocolate was formed into bars.

Finally, we went back inside to our table where we each got a small cup of pure chocolate, a little plastic spoon and a small brownie. Our guide had us try the pure chocolate first. It's very bitter and makes your mouth very dry. Then, on our spoons, we mixed in and individually taste tested the chocolate with sugar, ginger and hot pepper. All were very different and really changed the taste of the chocolate. At the end, we ate our brownies. Best ever.
The brownies were so good that we bought another huge one for $3 in the adjacent cafe. Absolutely the best brownie either of us had ever had. The whole tour was great and made up for the disappointment of the orchid farm.
After that, all we needed for lunch was a large, perfectly ripe mango that we bought for 50 cents from the fruit stand lady on the way back to the Dragonfly. Later in the afternoon, we sat on our hotel deck overlooking the river and went back to El Chef for dinner. Although it had rained on and off, we really enjoyed the day.