Breakfast
In the morning I ate a leisurely breakfast at the seaside and debated what to do with the day. I opted to get into my rental car and head north on the east side of Grenada and see what attractions I should visit. One of those is Belmont Estate, a cocoa plantation far up the coast.
Drive
Despite Grenada looking small on the map and distance from my hotel on the south side to the estate looking short on the map, the drive is close to an hour due to the windy roads and low speeds. As next Wednesday is Grenada’s 50th Independence Day the streets are already festooned with flags and banners, and even the walls and street borderlines have been painted with the island’s 3 colours.
Bathway Beach
Despite there being only one main road around the island, I missed the turnoff and ended up driving further north, past Riviere Salee and up to the northern Bathway Beach. I wasn’t quite ready to brave those waters, but the view was impressive and I turned around and found another route back south.
Belmont Estate
I arrived after the morning tour buses had already departed and was fortunate that there were no crowds. I received a personal tour and was shown the steps in the process of making cocoa and chocolate. The actual pods from the tree contain the seeds that eventually turn into cocoa, and these are white and seemingly have nothing to do with the end product.
These are harvested and then fermented in the shade for around 5 days, after which they are spread out in the sun to dry until their moisture content goes to 7.5% and they look absolutely dry and brown and shrivelled. Then they are sorted manually and stored until it is time to roast them. Then comes the roasting part and separating the shell from the nibs and then the magic happens when the mixture is crushed and rolled. This takes 5 days with their equipment so that the final consistency is just right and smooth. Then the finished product is cooled and aged for weeks or months and then it is tempered (I think of it as as the kind of annealing/tempering that steel goes through) and poured into the final forms.
Return
I returned to the hotel and sat in the shade of palm trees and read some trashy spy novels for the rest of the day. Ahhh, this is the life.