Dos Chorreras
Monday we begin the next phase of our Ecuador tour with the city of Cuenca. Until then, here are today’s Fun Photo Friday favorites of the road trip from Guayaquil to Cuenca:
Comments Off on Fun Photo Friday — Road to Cuenca, Ecuador Favorites
Filed under Fun Photo Friday, Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel, vacation
Cajas National Park
Leaving behind the cocoa plantation, our tour began to climb high into the Andes. Before reaching the highest point on this segment of our trip, however, our tour guide granted us a stop at a group of local fruit stands along the road.
Fruit Stand
This stop was a crowd-pleasing one, as we were still a ways from our lunch destination. Besides the bananas you see above, also available were passion fruit, guava, soursop, and many others I have no idea what they’re named.
Fruit Stand
But I do know pineapple when I see it:
Fruit Stand
After a long trek uphill our tour bus stopped at a lookout point in the Cajas National Park. The roads in Cajas reach elevations of up to 4,130 meters/13,550 feet. I have no idea if we reached that altitude, but I know that I definitely could feel the short climb up the hill to the overlook. Here you can see our bus and the surrounding area:
Bus Stop — Road to Cuenca at over 4,000 meters/13,000 feet
There are animals that can flourish at these altitudes, including llama and alpaca. Here is a sampling of the latter:
Alpaca in Cajas National Park
While I may have gotten a bit winded at this altitude, the scenery more than made up for the effort:
Cajas National Park
Leaving the park and beginning our gradual descent toward Cuenca, we still had one stop to make in the high Andes. It was lunch time at the Dos Chorreras Resort.
Andes
The restaurant at Dos Chorreras is quite the sight, with massive beams supporting tall ceilings in a bright, airy dining room with lots of color:
Dos Chorreras Resort
And if the rock is too big to move, then don’t move it:
Dos Chorreras Resort
How fresh is the food here? Take a look at what’s outside the entrance to the restaurant:
Dos Chorreras trout
Comments Off on Ecuador — Road to Cuenca; Fruits and Cajas National Park
Filed under Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel, vacation
Cocoa pod
On the morning of Tuesday, February 16, 2016 our tour group boarded the bus and headed out of Guayaquil southeast bound for the city of Cuenca. This is a 200-kilometer/125-mile journey that normally takes about three and a half hours. But we had several stops to make along the way, the first of which was a cocoa plantation.
Plantation flowers — not cocoa
We learned much about cocoa farming that day. For instance, the cocoa bean comes from the cacao (cocoa) tree, or Theobroma cacao, and there’s a lengthy process between that bean and your Swiss chocolate bar.
Baby cocoa pod
Slice open a cocoa pod and you’ll find cocoa beans coated in a slimy fruit pulp. Beware the pulp, as it’ll play havoc with your intestinal track if eaten. Fermented however it makes for an interesting alcoholic beverage:
Cocoa beans
Remove one of those slime-covered nuggets and slice into it to find the actual bean:
Sliced unfermented cocoa bean
This is how the sliced bean appears up close:
Sliced cocoa bean
That bean is far from ready for use, however. The first process involves laying the beans out to dry, which also results in the pulp liquefying and wicking away from the beans as the pulp ferments. The dried beans are then placed in bins and fermented for about a week, with each bin being stirred several times throughout the process. In the photo below, the higher bins contain the newest beans and the lowest bins hold the beans that have undergone the longest fermentation period:
Cocoa bean fermentation bins
Once the beans in the lowest bins have fermented enough they are shoveled into wheelbarrows and dumped out to dry in the sun. The middle bins are then emptied into the lower bins, and the upper bins into the middle bins. This fermentation and later drying are critical, for without this process the cocoa bean retains a taste similar to raw potato.
Cocoa beans curing in the sun
At this particular cocoa plantation we were given samples not only of chocolate from their cocoa beans, but also liquor from the fruit pulp of the cocoa pods.
Filed under Photography, R. Doug Wicker, travel, vacation, Wine & Food
Decisions — Murder in Paradise
Mystery novel available for Kindle
0
The Globe — Murder in Luxury
Mystery novel available for Kindle
0
R. Doug Wicker — Author 