2009, first time in the rain forest, eye to eye with boas, tarantulas and hummingbirds, but also admiring the nearby situated cocoa plantations, widely recognized as “gourmet cocoa producers”.    In this bar you will find 31 % of their Sanchez beans, exceptionally rich in cocoa butter,  together with a lot of natural vanilla. Enjoy this white chocolate with its flavour of butter, boiled milk, flowers and dried figs.

Try our origin bar from the Dominican Republic, available in our webshop, and get a taste of our story.

We resist the temptation to linger at the swimming pool of the Gran Bahia and watch the beautiful girls, and leave behind “Las Americas”, the airport at Punta Cana as quickly as possible. The rental car is ready. We avoid crowded Santo Domingo and resolutely choose the inland. Connoisseurs regard the beans from the region of San Francisco de Macoris as sublime, and those are the ones we go looking for. On the way we develop a banana phobia : bananas, bananas and more bananas… some sugar cane and then more sugar cane  provide some variety !

Luckily there are loads of fish and lots of stalls along the road to still our hunger. And finally the plantations with the local Hispaniola. This is not only the name of the island that is half Haiti and half Dominican Republic, but also of these rare sundried cocoa beans that give the chocolate its special aroma and texture.

Time is running out because the flight to Panama is reserved, but we have the necessary contacts for “the manna of the gods”; mission accomplished.

But we cannot restrain from paddling around the mangroves, where trees with roots like huge tentacles grow above the surface of the little rivers they grow in.   A piece of nature with the ambiance of the haunted house at the fair…