Food Tours · Tour

A Day as a Cocoa Farmer in Copacabana

An hour from Medellin, in Copacabana, there is a family that still farms the way their parents did, and this tour spends six hours with them. The subject is cocoa, and you do the whole thing rather than watch it. Picking the pods. Peeling. Fermenting. Drying. Roasting, over wood. Grinding, by hand. Moulding. And then eating what you made: hot chocolate, cocoa paste, cocoa nibs, and the chocolates you shaped, which you can buy to take away. That list is longer than it looks. Most chocolate experiences start at the roasted bean, because the earlier stages take weeks. Here you see them on the farm where they happen. The farm grows other things too, which is how a small Colombian finca survives: coffee, avocado, yuca, fruit and flowers, all of it explained by the people who planted it. Fruit from the farm and pandequeso come with the day. Six hours. Up to fifteen people, in English or Spanish, with an air-conditioned vehicle and hotel pick-up. Moderate fitness needed. Not recommended if you have a spinal injury or a heart condition.