After 6 weeks with my American trainer, I was transferred to a city about 6 hours south of Salvador, on the beach, called Ilheus. It is the heart of Cacao country where most of the chocolate trees are located. I spent a good 6 1/2 months there so I grew to really love the city and the people. It is a beautiful place.
Hyrum and Grant enjoying some of the mango varieties.
One of the coolest things we did was tour a cacao plantation. There was a little museum, they let us drink suco de cacao, a juice made out of the pulp around the chocolate seeds, we rode a cart and tromped through the jungle, and we got to see how they do some of the processing of the cocoa seeds.
Here we are enjoying the horse ride out to the jungle part where the trees grow. All of the trees need shade so there are some huge trees shading the relatively shorter cacao trees with banana trees and other random palms dispersed among them.
Here is a cacao pod broken open to display the fruit. Those are the cocoa “beans” covered in a delicious white pulp. They centrifuge the pulp and make juice out of it but it takes too much effort to be an exportable product and you basically don’t see it outside of the area, not even in Salvador. So most Brazilians have not tasted the delicious juice either. They let us have a couple of pods to take home and Hyrum smuggled home some beans to show people and try ourselves.
Our guide showing us a cacao tree. Notice the red fruit sticking out of the branches. It comes in several varieties so they are sometimes yellow on the outside, or red, or greenish. It needs a lot of water and it was raining a bit that day so it was nice and smushy under our feet and super lush. Apparently there are monkeys that live in the area but they are shy so we didn’t see any. We also didn’t see any water snakes which like the area too but we weren’t disappointed about that.
When the cocoa beans are harvested they put them in a container and basically let them ferment for a bit, and then they put them out in the sun to dry. They climb up there barefooted and husk them with their feet. Our guide let us do a little of it ourselves. They have huge tin roofs that slide over the top of these areas so that it covers them when it rains, which is frequently. Apparently when they export them they send the beans whole and process them in factories, so have no fear of dirty jungle-footed Brazilians, or American tourists, stomping on your chocolate.
Besides touring the cacao plantation, we sped around Ilheus looking at my old area, checking out the city, going to church, and swimming on the beach. Here I am on a typical street in my old area near where I lived. The streets are mostly cobblestone, built by hand.
A view of Ilheus from a hill above the city. The city is separated by that bridge with the center of the city to the north (right) and my area and outskirts to the south (left).
A big catholic church and nunnery above the city.
Every city worth its salt has at least one statue of Christ.
A kite-boarder showing off for us right off the Christ’s beach.
View of the city.
One of the things that made me sad is that we took a lot of pictures at church on Sunday with some of the members that I knew and worked with. Unfortunately, we took the pictures with our sweet Motorola Xoom, and Hyrum had a little accident with suco de maracuja (passion fruit juice) and the xoom died a ghastly death. So alas, I do not have those pictures to show, but imagine me with sweet smiling Brazilians. It was so fun to see them again. They are wonderful, wonderful people.
On the drive back to Salvador, we stopped at a beautiful waterfall that was about 60meters tall. We thought it was amazing, and it truly is, but after we went to Iguassu, we probably gush less about it. On the drive back to Salvador we decided to stay to the beach route and take a ferry across the bay to Salvador. This let us see some beautiful country and enjoy more of the water views. It did however, leave us in a terrible back-up waiting for the ferry on Sunday evening. We passed the time talking to this family who was waiting next to us. We enjoyed their company until they got a little giggly with the beer as they were waiting. They did give us some good directions back to our hotel, and they gave us a CD to take home. Apparently she is a budding singer and her slogan on the CD cover was “A voice that seduces.” If that doesn’t clinch you, I don’t know what would.
