Day 14 Heading into chocolate country

Today we left the city for a bus ride out of town and up in elevation to the great cocoa fields of Ecuador.  First stop is a Cacao Plantation.  Ecuador is famous for its amazing cocoa trees, so we got a great tour and tasting at a farm.  All told, hundreds of farmers in four providences have formed a coop to produce 2000 tons of high-quality chocolate a year.  Take that Nestles!  Great experience.

These are the cocoa pods, the yellow ones are ready to pick.

You cut the pod open and here is the 'fruit'.  They allow the white part
to ferment a few days, then the 'seeds' go into the greenhouse dryer.

After drying they are roasted, then prepped for the different chocolate products.
Our tasting was pineapple rolled in pure cocoa, different but excellent.

We continued up the Andes mountains topping out at 13,400 feet.  A quick jaunt up a trail for a better view left me a bit dizzy and winded.  But it is much cooler now, nice.  Lunch was at Tres Cruces.  An interesting restaurant/meeting center/trendy shopping destination.  A great meal then another short drive to Cuenca a city of 500,000 for a two day stay.  Elevation here is 8,400.

A great lunch.  This is potato soup.  Ecuador grows 127 types of potatoes!  Floating
in the soup is half an avocado and half an egg, hearty!  Salad followed then
our main dish of local trout and chicken.

And a fancy dessert.

Along the highway, fruit stands.  Tons of them.  We stopped to get a huge bunch
of small bananas to pass around in the bus, we also sampled an unknown
fruit sorta like papaya and picked up a sack of leche fruit from a vendor at
a toll booth.