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Sun Jan 17

Sightings :: Fog City News in SF

Fog City News owner Adam Smith with Fran Bigelow of Fran’s Chocolates in Seattle during a tasting/book signing in SF. Located on Market St in the Financial District, FCN carries well over 100 different chocolate bars. Here Adam is serving brownies he cooked from a recipe in Fran’s book “Pure Chocolate.” The recipe features chopped Gold Bar chocolate bars.

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Thu Jan 14

Sightings: Sweetriot on Virgin America flight 345

The Sweetriot unBar 65% as seen on the snack list in the seatback entertainment system on my Virgin America flight from Fort Lauderdale to SF.

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Panorama: downtown intersection in Santa Cruz se la Sierra, Bolivia

All of Bolivia is a curious,vibrant mix of cultures and eras stretching from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Some of that amalgam is, I hope, visible here.

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Wed Jan 13

Flying over the Beni

This photo was taken from the Cessna during the flight from Trinidad to Baures. The Itenez region of Beni department (almost 9,000,000 acres) consists almost entirely of savanna with raised “islands.” The savanna floods completely during the wet season and the islands are only a couple of meters above “high tide.” All of the chocolatales where the wild cacao grows (there are 32 of them) are located on these islands.

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Aerial View of Baures, Bolivia

My trip to the Hacienda Tranquilidad was not direct.

New York to Miami
Miami to Santa Cruz de la Sierra (red eye)
Santa Cruz to Trinidad (via overnight bus)
Trinidad to Baures (via four-seater (including the pilot) Cessna)
Baures to Hacienda Tranquilidad via 4WD

The dirt road leaving from the town center out the bottom-left of the photo is the road to Tranquilidad.

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Sightings: Orville Redenbacher's Nightmare

A bag of giant popcorn purchased on the street in Santa Cruz for 5 Bolivianos (about 70 cents). Cooked kettle corn - style (slightly sweet).

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How they make a caffe mocha at the "Starbucks of Bolivia"

That’s steamed milk at the bottom with a big hunk of dark chocolate in it, a float of espresso, and then whipped cream. 18 Bolivianos is about $2.50 and the WiFi is free.

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Sightings: Aeropuerto El Alto, La Paz, Bolivia

To tell the truth, I never understood the Belgian fascination with putting mayonnaise on french fries. So, the Bolivian taste for mayonnaise on potato chips totally escapes me - especially in the rarified atmosphere at 4,200 meters.

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Sun Jan 10

Wild Cacao Pods, Hacienda Tranquilidad, Bolivia

Six cacao pods harvested on the Hacienda Tranquilidad outside of Baures, Bolivia. There are four or five different varieties of wild cacao growing in Bolivia. The colors of ripe pods are yellow and green, with orange being slightly over-ripe. Unlike many other varieties of cacao, there are no reds to be seen anywhere!

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Planting "Wild" Cacao Seedlings

Volker Lehmann, the owner of Hacienda Tranquilidad, has a formal educational background in tropical agronomy and years of experience in Bolivia and elsewhere. He selects seeds from pods from trees he knows to abundant producers, germinates them in his nursery (where he also grows teak, cashew, acai, and several other plants) for interplanting outside of the core chocolatales where the wild trees are found. I was part of a crew of four people tasked with planting about 220 seedlings in an area of mixed varieties of plantains and bananas.

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Early morning on the Arroyo Tranquilidad

This photo was taken early in the morning on the bridge over the Arroyo Tranquilidad which borders one edge of the Hacienda Tranquilidad. Apart from the natural beauty what you can’t get here is the ambient sound environment - bird calls, insect noises, frogs, the wind. What is most captivating is that the only sounds you hear are natural sounds - nothing man-made. Tranquilidad is a very good name for this place. However, there are black caiman (a kind of crocodile) and electric eel in these waters, so looks are deceiving.

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Early morning on the Arroyo Tranquilidad

This photo was taken early in the morning on the bridge over the Arroyo Tranquilidad which borders one edge of the Hacienda Tranquilidad. Apart from the natural beauty what you can’t get here is the ambient sound environment - bird calls, insect noises, frogs, the wind. What is most captivating is that the only sounds you hear are natural sounds - nothing man-made. Tranquilidad is a very good name for this place. However, there are black caiman (a kind of crocodile) and electric eel in these waters, so looks are deceiving.

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The Old Man of the Wild Cacao Forest ...

… the tree, not me! This majestic wild cacao tree is probably hundreds of years old and is still very productive. Unlike virtually all other cacao varieties, which grow from a single trunk, as you can see there are dozens of trunks and new shoots called chupons. In a “modern” cacao farm the chupons would be pruned. On the wild cacao trees they are not as the unproductive chupons will simply wither and die.

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Planting "Wild" Cacao Seedlings

Volker Lehmann, the owner of Hacienda Tranquilidad, has a formal educational background in tropical agronomy and years of experience in Bolivia and elsewhere. He selects seeds from pods from trees he knows to abundant producers, germinates them in his nursery (where he also grows teak, cashew, acai, and several other plants) for interplanting outside of the core chocolatales where the wild trees are found. I was part of a crew of four people tasked with planting about 220 seedlings in an area of mixed varieties of plantains and bananas.

Posted via email from LaVidaCocoa | Comment »
Discover Chocolate and Live La Vida Cocoa - TheChocolateLife.com

Planting "Wild" Cacao Seedlings

Volker Lehmann, the owner of Hacienda Tranquilidad, has a formal educational background in tropical agronomy and years of experience in Bolivia and elsewhere. He selects seeds from pods from trees he knows to abundant producers, germinates them in his nursery (where he also grows teak, cashew, acai, and several other plants) for interplanting outside of the core chocolatales where the wild trees are found. I was part of a crew of four people tasked with planting about 220 seedlings in an area of mixed varieties of plantains and bananas.

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Discover Chocolate and Live La Vida Cocoa - TheChocolateLife.com