El Castillo del Cacao

This weekend I went to Matagalpa with my new roommates, Trine and Camilla, the "crazy Norwegians" (who aren't really crazy, just really funny, fun and sweet). (They have very generously opened their home to me. I'll take some pictures soon...)

Matagalpa is about a two-hour bus ride from Esteli. Trine, Camilla and I had a bet going on how many vendors/beggars/Evangelicals would get on the bus and attempt to sell/ask for money/pray (or any combination of the three). Not including the dozens and dozens of people standing on their tip-toes against the bus windows, yelling wildly, holding up bags of tomatoes, onions, pop, enchiladas, stickers, and any other number of things, I thought their might be about a dozen people on board. Trine guessed 10 and Camilla guessed 14. We were all wrong. There were over 20. From graphic descriptions (and pictures) of parasites from vendors selling medicines and vitamins (I never knew that vitamin B could cure so many things!), to children "singing" (more like screeching right in my ear) about the need for us sinners to repent, to blind men and amputees, to plastic bags full of stew, to the blaring romantic 80's music playing, there was never a dull moment.

We had a little trouble finding a hotel room because, unbeknownst to us, it was Matagalpa's anniversary weekend. Any excuse for a fiesta, right? We did end up finding a great place and then hurried to hit the chocolate factory before it closed for the afternoon.

The hostel where I was staying in Esteli sells chocolate from El Castillo del Cacao, and I really wanted to visit. There are only two ingredients in these chocolate bars--cacoa and sugar--no milk, no preservatives, nothing. It's absolutely incredible!

The owner of this small-scale factory is a Dutch anthropologist, who began this operation about four years ago. Apparently no other chocolate factory existed in the country and cacao fruits were literally rotting off the trees. The people here were not accustomed to making chocolate out of the fruits. They would make pinol out of the fruit, but most of the seeds (the cacao) was wasted. Harm's proposal won a contest in Holland, and he received a grant to start up the factory.

Here is the castle. I thought maybe the name of the factory came from some old ruins or something. No. Harm said that as a child he always wanted to live in a castle. So he built one.

Here is the property. The house is absolutely beautiful. They have it set up so that the visitors feel like house guests. We had coffee and snacks served and were free to help ourselves in the kitchen. Very homey.

Here is the front room. I bought some chocolates to share with the family in Managua.

Harm told us a lot about the history of cacao in Central America, about the indigenous uses for it in ancient recipes, the different fruits, how one can easily use a pestal to crack the shell after the seeds dry.

Here are some large bags of cacao from different regions in Nicaragua. Harm buys all of the cacao from small producers, which provides a lot of local employment.

He wanted to make sure that this project was replicable, so he spent a lot of time figuring out how to build the various machines with local resources. It took one man four months to build this roaster for him, but it also got other local people interested in the machines. The man sold 8 more machines, so others are able to make chocolate too.

An incredible view of Matagalpa from the castle-top.

I felt like a little kid in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Actually, the owner did resemble Willy Wonka a little bit. He kept running around all over the place, very soft spoken, interesting commentary. However, I think his eccentricity had more to do with his role as an academic than as a chocolate maker. :-)

Viewing the mountains through the turrets.

Here are Lauren (left), Trine (kneeling taking a picture), and Camilla. I met Lauren in the hostel in Esteli and then ran into her randomly in Matagalpa. She's a very sweet girl from Oregon. We had a great time checking out the factory, sampling everything, and relaxing outside chatting and sipping coffee...